Sure, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas sounds like a cutesy movie title, all little boys and sleepy-time. But that's not at all what you're in for. This one is not so much with the cute and cuddly, and much more with the tear-jerking. Based on the novel of the same name, this movie is about Bruno, the young son of a Nazi soldier. He's your typical eight-year-old boy: he likes to explore, play checkers, make friends. So when they are moved out of Berlin, Bruno explores all the way to the fence around a concentration camp that he happens to live near. He meets a young boy his age in "striped pajamas," and they become friends. Problem is? He's a Jew, and is supposed to be the enemy. I haven't read the novel, but the movie looks like it raises important questions, about what it meant to be a soldier during the Nazi regime (they couldn't have all been bad, right?), and even what it means to be a soldier blindly following orders now. This is one of those stories that points out how the world could be so much simpler if we all looked at it through the eyes of children (unlike the genre that supposes kids are evil). It's likely to be touching and sad and inspiring, and might leave you even more depressed once you leave the theater and step back into a world that's run by adults.

Reviews By People Who've Actually Seen It:
Variety
Rotten Tomatoes