"Hitler's Folly", or, more accurately, "Plympton's Folly" is one of the most awful attempts at comedy I have ever had the misfortune to witness. This opinion is not, as the director makes a point of assuming on camera, a result of my being in any way offended by the content of this film; on the contrary, there is next to nothing offensive in the content of this movie. It is an hour's worth of boring, trite "jokes" describing how Hitler, despite pursuing the path of an animator, still apparently ends up at the helm of Germany, and attempts to craft the ultimate German animated masterpiece amidst the war.
The film was directed by noted animator Bill Plympton, and the fact that he is unused to the medium of live-action filmmaking shows. Most of the film is neither live-action nor animated, but rather a slideshow with narration. (Riveting.) This is frequently interrupted by segments featuring an equally uninteresting man who has discovered Hitler's lost animated works, in particular his Disney-inspired character "Downey Duck". Segments of animation are few and far-between, and there is no attempt to make them appear "aged" beyond a black-and-white filter. The presentation, overall, is extremely amateurish.
Worse than the style, however, is the film's painfully awful attempts at comedy. A good Hitler-inspired farce, such as 2015's "Look Who's Back" should know how to play with dark humor to create a simultaneous bout of cringing and laughter. Nothing of that sort can be found here. Instead, we get an overlong blending of the rise of Hitler and the Walt Disney story, complete with a Nazi-themed Disneyland parody that somehow manages to avoid making any off-color jokes. We are treated to an extremely juvenile diatribe about how the Nazis were really all about animation and everything they did was secretly in pursuit of Hitler's would-be animated masterpiece. It's an undercooked joke that would have felt stale in a one-minute short, and yet it is dragged out to a full hour.
The premise of staging a movie on Hitler's enjoyment of animation is a worthy one, but it's clear that Plympton did not put a ton of thought into this film. An experimental approach, or at least something less conventional (or more clever) may very well have been warranted here. One thing is certain though, and that is that this is the worst possible way this topic could have been approached. Playing it safe only makes the film look more juvenile.
This movie is a disaster, and I urge fans of both Plympton and dark comedy to stay far away from this. You'll be better off just watching Monty Python's "Mr. Hilter" sketch, which deals in similar comedic territoy, but is not only far funnier but also far shorter.
