How this movie got a nomination for Best Picture baffles me. It's not terrible. There's certainly some imagination to it. But it goes nowhere - except to the obvious ending. Ideas introduced early in the picture, like Jojo being told by his invisible friend to develop the characteristics of the rabbit, never get developed. Sometimes there is comedy of anachronism when we hear modern pop music, like the Beatles, while watching a scene from World War II, but that too goes nowhere. Yes, there's certainly a change in Jojo's views on Hitler and anti-semitism, but they come for obvious reasons.

I found myself wishing it would end long before it did.

According to an article I read before writing this, the director/script writer added a great deal of his own material, including the imaginary friend, to this movie, and cut out most of the second half of the novel on which he based it. I don't expect feature movies to reproduce exactly the works on which they are based, but the radical changes made here from the source may explain why this movie doesn't hold together very well.

Catch this at home on streaming or dvd. I was sorry I went to see it in a theater, where I was stuck just watching it for the whole picture.