Come award season time, and you can almost always be that the Holocaust will again be mined for material. No one really wants to bash any film depicting these horrors, lest they be grouped with anti-Semites and neo-Nazi sympathizers; thus, mediocre/inferior Holocaust films get a relatively free ride through the critical minefield. Of course, crafting effective Holocaust drama is tricky, given how easily the material can sink into sentimentality and melodrama. NO fictional piece can ever match the horrific reality so vividly chronicled in Resnais' Night and Fog. Spielberg approaches this by using a hand held camera to thrust us inside the Warsaw ghetto in Schindler's List, but the strongest Holocaust films generally use the historical period as background: The Pawnbroker; Cabaret; Sophie's Choice; Europa, Europa; The Counterfeiters.

After seeing the trailer, I had high hopes that The Boy in the Striped Pajamas would rise above the mediocre with a promising premise: seeing the Holocaust through the innocent point of view of children. The film works well enough when it lingers in that realm—initially following 8 year old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) and his buddies through the Berlin streets as the Gestapo rounds up truckloads of Jews. Glimmers of hope for originality remain when Bruno's grandmother (Sheila Hancock) expresses disdain for the Nazi cause, but she only gets a couple of screen time minutes.

Getting more time (but not enough), Bruno's mother (Vera Farmiga from The Departed) knows about her husband's role as commander of a concentration camp but neither knows nor approves of the "Final Solution." The remaining adults could be portrayed by cardboard cutouts, who only need raise their voices and sneer a bit to illustrate Nazi vileness. These include Bruno's father (David Thewlis from Total Eclipse), his propaganda touting tutor (Jim Norton), and menacing Lt. Kotler (Rupert Friend). But this movie is never really about any of the characters anyway; it's strictly a plot driven vehicle melodramatic fantasy that plods predictably through its paces.

Torn away from the family's comfortable home to live in the country, Bruno becomes intrigued by a strange “farm” he can see through his window, where the workers seem to all be wearing striped pajamas. Forbidden to visit the farm and without playmates, Bruno inevitably defies his mother and sneaks away to the barbed wire edge of the labor camp where he meets up with skinny, bald 8 year old Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). Bruno wants companionship to alleviate his boredom; Shmuel merely wants a ham sandwich. But with such limited choices, we're expected to believe that they become fast friends even with an expected betrayal.

Their awkward situation doesn't allow much boyhood contact beyond sneaking chocolates through the fence and playing checkers, but these brief vignettes make their scenes a bit more believable than the reality. After all, it's hardly realistic to think that Shmuel is “lucky” enough to have survived—let alone be allowed to drift off by himself daily during his work detail to connect with Bruno.

The film really loses all credibility during its final 15 minutes with a denouement that is telegraphed well ahead of time. To make sure that the audience "gets it"director Mark Herman turns the volume up tenfold on James Horner's syrupy score. I'd advise earplugs, but the filmmaker shows little confidence in his lazy script for good reason. Realizing that his shallow allegory just doesn't resonate the proper shock value, he goes for auditory overload to shoot for the tear ducts. Unless you're a Holocaust film completist, there's very little reason to check this film out. I wouldn't even recommend wasting a Netflix rental queue spot. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas disappoints in the end by settling for stereotypical shmaltz over substance.