There's an unsettling sort of deja vu to be had in watching this strange and saccharine film, based on the 2005 young-adult bestseller by Australian writer Markus Zusak. I have not read the book, but the film looks like a creepy new version of the Anne Frank story, with the leading character recast as a brave and pretty little Aryan girl; the brutal reality of the Holocaust is not dwelt upon. Sophie Nélisse plays Liesel, a young girl in 1930s Germany who is left to kindly but harassed foster parents Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson) by her fugitive Communist mother. It is this trio's courage and victimhood that take centre-stage. Liesel is forced to join the Hitler Youth, but is secretly disgusted by the Nazis' book-burning displays and conceives a love of literature by "borrowing" books from the Mayor's wife. And as war breaks out, she is taught to love writing by Max (Ben Schnetzer), the Jew that her foster parents are hiding in the cellar, and whose deferential friendship and gratitude are the guarantee of their good-Germanness. This lite-historical tosh has absolutely nothing in common with the power of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. It's a worryingly lenient and obtuse approach to history and historical evil, which are smothered in feelgood tragi-sentimental slush.