So if you’ve seen the trailers for this, it looks like a light comedy about Nazis from Taika Waititi, and… it’s not that, exactly. Like, it is comedic in tone, but it’s a character drama about a family (mostly focused on the 10-year-old boy protagonist, but there are scenes with his mom that don’t have him in) living in the late days of Nazi Germany.

So the first thing to say about it is that at a straightforward craft level, it’s really well done. The characters are well-acted (Scarlett Johansson is great as the mom; Thomasin McKenzie is great; Sam Rockwell is great; the kid actors are great; Rebel Wilson is the only one who maybe goes too ham and doesn’t bring a layer of groundedness to her character), it’s visually distinctive with its bright and colorful view of WW2, the writing is sharp. It’s a good, fun, enjoyable movie…

… where Hitler is one of the characters. And that’s the dissonant note here that apparently divided critics and got it some backlash, the question of doing a “light” take on Hitler at all. It’s honestly somewhat of a surprise to me that the movie got made these days; it feels like the kind of thing that might have been popular around the turn of the century, when there was a lot more appetite for transgressive art than there is now.

But so what I’ll say is that this isn’t just some kind of adolescent shock value thing. Waititi knows what he’s doing, and starting off with this cheerful, patriotic view of Hitler and the Nazis is to establish this kid’s view of what it means to be a German at this time, and then the tragedies and complexities get layered onto that as the kid has to grow up quickly. You couldn’t really tell this story without it starting out where it does.

And if there are people who think that maybe then it’s better just not to tell this story and to stick to only the grimmest and most reverentially somber takes, well, I understand where that’s coming from and I don’t entirely disagree with it; but also I don’t entirely agree with it, and am glad I watched this.