I'd like to first get the comparisons to Life is Beautiful out of the way. There is sufficient overlap in the premises of the two films--both involve men during the Holocaust employing fantasy to give hope to a child--that comparisons are inevitable. Jakob the Liar began shooting before Life is Beautiful was released, so it's not a knockoff, and neither is it a particularly similar film. Where Life is Beautiful was fantastical, Jakob the Liar is gritty. Where Life is Beautiful was grand, Jakob the Liar is quotidian. Where Life is Beautiful was a masterpiece, Jakob the Liar is dreck.

Holocaust films are tricky to criticize, because it all comes down to one's subjective reaction. We all agree that a poorly executed Holocaust film can trivialize the Holocaust, but whether or not a particular Holocaust film does the topic justice pretty much hinges on whether we, as critics, liked that particular film. I, for one, thought Life is Beautiful was terrific, but some critics, like that logorrheic Philistine David Denby, found the film to be an insult to the momentous events it portrayed. It worked for me because I didn't really feel that it was about the Holocaust--I felt it was about how a big heart could triumph over the most horrific reality. You wouldn't take Life is Beautiful as a history lesson. It was a fable, and a beautiful one at that.

Jakob the Liar, directed by Peter Kassovitz from a 30-year-old novel, seems more interested in the history. It's necessarily about the Holocaust because the events portrayed couldn't have taken place in any other time or any other place. Therefore the only context for analysis is as a Holocaust Movie. And the question arises: does it do its topic justice?

The answer is no, but the reason is hard for me to lay a finger on. Specifically, I have a suspicion that the film was meant to be funny. Here's why: the jaunty music, the casting of familiar comic faces (Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, and of course Robin Williams), the fact that the film opens with an old joke about Hitler and an explanation from Jakob Heym (Robin Williams' character) that laughter is the way his people have survived in times of hardship. There are also many slapsticky moments--goofy men hiding in closets, that sort of thing. But if this film was, in fact, trying for humor, it fails miserably--the audience I saw it with sat in deathly silence.

The bulk of this misguided film isn't monstrously bad--there are things to enjoy, such as the meticulous costumes and set design, and the performance of Hannah Taylor-Gordon, who plays Jakob's young ward. She's a little charmer. Liev Schreiber is also pretty good as a well-meaning but none too bright ex-boxer. Robin Williams is at his most reserved, but hasn't the world had enough of him in all these showy Oscar-contender roles? Maybe he should put on another Mrs. Doubtfire dress so he can fuck up a genre no one really cares about.

Oh, yeah, so the plot . . . The film tells the story of a Polish ghetto during the war, and how everyone becomes convinced that Jakob Heym has an outlawed radio from which he can get news of the war. It's a simple tale, and as told here, not exactly a nailbiter. If there's little humor in the film, there's even less drama--at times I felt like I was watching Act One of a dinner-theatre production of "Fiddler on the Roof" in a vegetarian restaurant. All beards and running around and bits of Yiddish for authenticity . . . but no meat.

It's not until the picture's third act that it becomes . . . what's a polite word for "vile"? At that point, after this insubstantial little village tale, we're subjected to (in order): Robin Williams getting tortured, the entire cast being rounded up for extermination, a dunderheaded scene in which Jakob supposedly gets the upper hand on his captors, and the big climactic moment of the film, which, given the fact that it plays out almost exactly as you expect it will--but with a little twist that I'm sure the filmmakers found very clever in a post-modern sort of way--manages to be simultaneously predictable and disappointing.

Then there's the coda, which features a meta-textual copout that's almost breathtakingly repugnant. Don't read this sentence if you don't want to know the ending, but here's a summary: at the end, everyone, including the little girl, is probably gassed, but the picture still manages to end with singers dressed as the Andrews Sisters performing the Beer Barrel Polka in front of a tank. You think I'm kidding?

Jakob the Liar is about the power of delusion to give hope, and it wallows in delusion.

Keep that shit to yourselves, Robin Williams and company. I don't want any part of your lies.