Theater Whore: The Book Thief

This movie should've been called The Time Thief. Okay, okay. I know that it isn't fair for me to start a review that way but damn it. I wish it had stopped many times and it refused to. Its rare when I think to myself “Just die already!” when watching something, but I did. This movie, The Book Thief, is about a little girl being taken and adopted by some people in Germany when it is all about the Nazi coming up and Hitler beginning his reign of terror.

This girl is on a train with her mom and brother and everyone looks miserable. Death is narrating and starting off with something like “You will all die one day.” I'm like, wow. Way to start a movie! The little brother just up and dies because its the 1930's and that's what folks did. They bury him and she steals a book dropped by the gravedigger. She is sent to live with this nice old man and his angry ass wife (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson).

"There once was a man from Nantucket..."

She starts school and can't read. The old man, her new father, teaches her. She meets this kid who likes her. He covers himself with muck to look Black like Jesse Owens and I said out loud “Oh, no...” This Jewish dude starts hiding out in their place and he seems to be dying for two years straight. She learns to hate Hitler. People die. Ugh. I can't. Listen. If I had walked out the theater after the first ending I would have liked this a little better. The acting was nothing to write home about. The accents were all over the place (the main character, Liesel (I heard it as “Laser”), is played by a French-Canadian/Puerto Rican girl. She makes lots of stupid decisions that you can't even blame being young on.

When this was over I swore it would be written and directed by the same person because there needed to be a lot of editing and most times writer/director's leave a lot of shit in that they didn't. Look at how Quentin Tarantino has been since his editor died. The movie has an ending. Bombs. Then it goes on. There is another ending. Then it goes on some more. Then it ends again. Then there is another goddamn ending! I actually slid down my chair waiting for it to finally end. 

And the whole Death narration probably works well in the book, which I haven't read. But it made this seem like a strange Disney movie. There's no reason to rush out and see this. Cam says there is award talk about this but I think its just because this year has been so crappy with films and they have to fill ten slots now.

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