Verdict: An emotionally uneven, muddled fable about hope in the face of horror.

Details: Starring Robin Williams, Alan Arkin and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Rated PG-13 for violence and disturbing images. 1 hour, 54 minutes.

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Review: How do you walk through the graves of the Holocaust's dead?

Metaphorically, that's what a filmmaker has to decide when addressing the atrocities of World War II. Does he wish to memorialize the suffering of the victims or celebrate their too-short lives? Does he approach this subject with respect? With outrage? With giddy madness? Or maybe with laughter?

Past directors have filtered the Holocaust through a wide range of moods: the monolithic sobriety of documentaries such as "Shoah," the intimate-epic dramas of "Schindler's List," the black comedy of "Europa Europa," the daring, exuberant slapstick of Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful." Given so many sure-footed forebears, the last thing a filmmaker wants to do is stumble aimlessly through this emotionally mined territory.

That, unfortunately, is what "Jakob the Liar" does. It's a plodding, well-intended comedy-drama drowned in a muddy palette of grays and browns, thick with the odd sound of American actors using fake Polish accents. Robin Williams plays Jakob, a Jewish former restaurateur scraping along in a Nazi-controlled ghetto in the final months of the war. By accident, he overhears news of a Russian victory from a Nazi official's office radio. When he shares the information with neighbors, they become convinced that he has a radio hidden at home — a crime punishable by death if discovered by the Nazis.

Though he knows the dangers of the rumor, Jakob starts to invent reports from the front, seeing how good news gives others in the ghetto a reason to hope, to live. Given Williams' recent spate of manipulative movies that encouraged audiences to laugh through their tears ("What Dreams May Come," "Patch Adams"), you cringe when Jakob takes in an orphaned girl (Hannah Taylor Gordon), knowing how mawkish Williams can get.

But the film winds up surprising you, if not in welcome ways. It keeps the goo to a minimum. Williams does impersonate a radio broadcast to amuse the girl, but it's a restrained scene; after a point, you wish Williams would go over the top and breathe some life into the movie. His occasional comic moments only serve to remind you of the fantastic, fablelike exaggerations Benigni risked in his "Life Is Beautiful."

A remake of an Oscar-nominated 1974 German movie, "Jakob the Liar" shuffles to its end, uncertain whether it's a comedy or a tragedy. Though the supporting cast — including Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Liev Schreiber — is wonderful, the actors never emerge from the general background gloom.

The director is Peter Kassovitz, whose son Mathieu made an international splash in 1995 with his urban thriller "La Haine (Hate)." Maybe the wrong Kassovitz directed this new movie. "Hate" had the sort of unapologetic rigor and speed that "Jakob" sorely needs. It is a respectable piece of work, but ultimately it's what a film of this nature should never, ever be: dull.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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