Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

And yet the great conundrum of the Holocaust is that it was perpetrated by human beings, not monsters. Few movies have rendered this puzzle so powerfully.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Even though it unfolds almost entirely through a child's eyes, and contains no onscreen violence, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas packs as devastating a punch as an adult-oriented drama about the subject. Its concluding five minutes are almost impossible to watch.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is not only about Germany during the war, although the story it tells is heartbreaking in more than one way. It is about a value system that survives like a virus.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Viewers should know that the film's resolution, though admirably restrained and unsentimental, is devastatingly sad. Parents should take this into account. This beautifully rendered family film is told in a classic and old-fashioned style, in the best sense, providing poignant and powerful teachable moments.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

The film has any number of chances to exploit the setting and Butterfield's wide-eyed innocence, but instead, it mines a vast, eerie tension by keeping both boys in the dark.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Turns out this is a thoughtful, well-acted film that manages to view this most inconceivable of travesties through the eyes of child without being childish itself.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Boyne's tale is starkly cautionary, and writer-director Herman handles a difficult topic with great sensitivity, drawing splendid performances from his young actors with David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga and the other grown-ups reliably efficient.

Variety Derek Elley

Opening half-hour has some of the best stuff in the movie, walking a precarious line between black irony and showing the war from a totally German viewpoint, without tipping over into gallows humor or parody.

Village Voice Chuck Wilson

In adapting Irishman John Boyne's acclaimed young-adult novel, writer-director Mark Herman (Little Voice) draws beautifully modulated performances from his two child actors, who navigate a full range of emotions from wonder to betrayal to guilt.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

In key ways, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is like Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth": a child, caught in the waking nightmare of one of history's ugliest times, confronting the horrors of a grown-up world, and dealing with them as best he, or she, can.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors you.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Told from a different angle than any other Holocaust film I've seen.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Because its gaze is so level and so unyielding, it stands as one of the better dramatic films made on this subject (although it's not nearly as fine as Louis Malle's "Au Revoir les Enfants."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result isn't meant to be an historical document transmuted into fiction; instead, it's fiction turned into a fable, a dark fable.

Los Angeles Times Sheri Linden

The film's two levels -- metaphoric and nitty-gritty -- don't mesh until the devastation of the closing sequence, which both indulges in and transcends melodrama.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas should be heartbreaking, but it isn't. The muted quality of its impact is the result of narrative shortcuts and a desire to keep the images from being too startling.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Herman's intentions are admirable, but his results are unsettling in the worst ways.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The bulk of the movie consists of scene after scene coyly setting up the same ironic juxtaposition, in the exact same way, about innocence vs. Nazism.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The film succeeds to the degree that it does -- partially, but honorably and sometimes affectingly -- because it was made as well as it was.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

True artists will risk sacrificing audience goodwill for truth and sentimentality for cold historical reality, but Herman doesn't want your respect; he just wants your tears.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

I found the movie impossibly basic and sanitized as a "never again" parable of the Final Solution - and simply wrongheaded as a story about children.

Washington Post John Anderson

Although it's a far less objectionable Holocaust revision than, say, Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful," Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is yet another attempt to revisit a sorrowful event in history that should never be forgotten or used for entertainment.

NPR Bob Mondello

The faux-naive point of view probably worked better in the novel; the literalness of film renders certain of the story's conceits overly precious.

TV Guide Nathan Southern

Herman fails to journey beyond the surface-level realities of his central perspective, which makes his film feel half-developed and poorly conceived, and drives it into sensationalism.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it struck me that weaving a touching little tale about a death-camp friendship is actually a pretty bad way to teach kids about the Holocaust.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

An appalling, jaw-dropping movie that will cause serious nightmares.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

See the Holocaust trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family. Better yet and in all sincerity: don't.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This might have had some potential as a German exercise in self-examination, but as a tony BBC Films production, with the actors all speaking British-accented English (including Jersey girl Farmiga), it reeks of self-righteousness.