Stars: Robin Williams, Alan Arkin, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Liev Schreiber

Director: Peter Kassovitz

Summary: Jakob is a poor Jewish cafe owner in Nazi occupied Poland in 1944. He accidentally hears good news about the war on a radio and spreads this to his depressed friends who have heard no news since 1939. Unfortunately the rumour also spreads that Jakob has a radio and this is an offence punishable by death...

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Jakob the Liarhas a hard road to travel, since--Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautifulaside--milking the Holocaust for laughs is a dangerous game. Even the blackest, most therapeutic humour turns queasy in the shadow of such monstrous evil: it's like dancing on a mass grave. Here the eponymous schlemiel plays out his semi-farcical adventures in the mean streets of the Warsaw Ghetto circa 1944. The skies are always leaden over Jakob's hometown, reflecting the comic climate that pervades this mostly unfortunate adaptation of Jurek Becker's autobiographical book (first filmed in 1975). Jakob Heym (Robin Williams in overbearingly earnest mode) gets tangled in a string of self-perpetuating lies about a hidden radio, supposedly broadcasting news that the victorious Red Army is nearing. His desperate attempts to convince a clutch of insistently idiosyncratic friends (clichés to a man: Liev Schreiber, Bob Balaban, Michael Jeter, Alan Arkin) and obligatory Nazi bad guys that the radio doesn't exist are complicated by the fact that he's stashed a fugitive kid (a dead ringer for Anne Frank) in his attic--and by abundant evidence that lies are the best medicine for the ghetto's skyrocketing suicide rate. Copious unfunny misunderstandings and pratfalls abound in this Holocaust rendition of Fiddler on the Roof(you expect Williams to break into "If I were a funny man... "). Ultimately, Jakob the Liarloses its way for good in some very ugly violence and a rather nasty final twist: the film's ending might just be rubbing our noses in another feel-good lie. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	2 Trailers, Behind The Scenes Featurette, Commentary, Filmographies, Musical Highlights
Subtitles:	Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish
Release Date:	March 8, 2004
Runtime:	115 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C 822 384 2
Keywords:	Liar, General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Jakob
Genre:	Drama