In a Polish ghetto, Jakob is sent to the Nazi officer on duty to be punished for staying out past the curfew. Over the German radio, he overhears the news of an approaching Russian army. He then finds and hides a girl who escaped from a train headed for a concentration camp. He repeats the news about the Russian army to one of his friends, who concludes that Jakob has a radio, contraband punishable by death. Pretty soon, the whole ghetto believes it, and Jakob starts making up good news to give them hope.

This is a great idea, and we would expect that Robin Williams’s comedic and empathetic range would take this movie far, but for the great part of the story, Jakob first denies that he has the radio, then resists making up the news, and when we finally hear the news that is supposed to bring hope, it comes across as flat and passionless. We know we are supposed to feel hopeful, but we don’t. We know we are supposed to laugh at Jakob, but we don’t. We neither feel the horror of the Holocaust, nor the hope that can be born in the darkest of circumstances.

As a major flaw, Jakob never develops true emotional connection with any of the characters, not even the wise, wide-eyed girl he hides in his attic. She is hungry, and he feeds her. She is sick, and he comforts her. She wants to hear the radio, and he creates a mock up of a radio show, but he never touches her heart and soul, nor that of any of the other characters. Strangely enough, the most powerful scenes occur when Jakob is facing the Nazi officer, and when the Professor (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is confronting the Nazi General. Unfortunately, those scenes are too short and too tangential to set the tone for the whole movie.

In the end, we can only think of how Jakob was trying to copy Life Is Beautiful. Let us summarize in saying that it failed.