As the most singularly family-friendly corporate monolith on the planet, the last thing you’d expect to see riding a wave of popularity on Disney’s in-house streaming service is a movie where one of the major supporting characters just so happens to be Adolf Hitler.
And yet, that’s exactly where we find ourselves after Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit crashed the platform’s most-watched list to land straight into seventeenth place, as per FlixPatrol. Of course, the satirical dramatic comedy does nothing but poke fun at the infamous dictator, with writer and director Waititi having an absolute blast embodying a comical caricature of the Nazi leader.
Despite a potentially tricky marketing campaign that had to use the backdrop of World War II as the selling point for an outlandish fantasy, Jojo Rabbit managed to become a critical and commercial smash hit. A $90 million haul at the box office on a $14 million budget was a solid return, while Waititi nabbed himself an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, one of six nominations accrued by the movie, which included a Best Picture nod.
Jojo Rabbit deftly navigates the potential minefield of combining irreverent humor with serious themes, and while it wasn’t for everyone, it’s clearly proving to be a major success among Disney Plus subscribers this weekend.
Published: Dec 5, 2021 01:35 pm