Not even bad in a good way

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

(Contains only mild spoilers, if at all)I watch a lot of WW2 documentaries. Pretty much everything I can get my hands on. Literally over a hundred of them in my collection.This has to be one of the best since it has some of the least bias of them all. Here you take sort of a trip through the eyes of Joseph Goebbels him self. One of the highest of Hitlers henchmen and the Nazi party. The entire narrative is spoken from Goebbels diary. So you get his point of view; how he saw him self, the war, Germany, Hitler, and so on.Where this is great it's a problem with the majority of WW2 documentaries. It's an injustice to just demonize everyone and everything about the German side of WW2. Sure Hitler's Naziism was organized Evil, but the point is you have to see things as they are/were. View the facts and the full data of WW2 to understand how it came about and what transpired. Something everyone the world needs to understand. Less we let this dark history repeat it's self again.This movie is not the best for new WW2 enthusiasts. It is probably better to watch some other documentaries (and, or, read) that cover who Goebbels was and the over all relation to Hitler and how events unfold over the war. It just sort of adds a lot to over all picture. This is not an epic chronology of the war. And although I found it very entertaining, it is not really an "entertainment" movie. It's more about enlightenment.One of the neatest things I got out of it was how he looked at "propaganda". How he so zealously and purposely went about it. He went about it as a science and an art. It was not "brain washing", it was not about tricking people into believing something. It was about rallying the German people into a fervor to work and fight harder, to keep them in high spirits, and then on the outside to convince the world to join the Nazi cause. And yes too, those evil attempts to lure the Jewish population into believing the death camps where some sort of "Club Med" vacation - happy time - work place.Furthermore how he saw films as an excellent propaganda vehicle and then he comments on how the Allies where bad at it in their own films. It dawned on me that yes maybe they are both "propaganda" but then one was more to inform in a democratic, fairly free thinking way, where the other (Goebbels) to more directly say "this is what is is", "this is what is happening", "think this". And how similar bad propaganda is happening today to push political views and so on..If you are a WW2 history buff then you definitely want to see this film.

This is a sorry excuse for a film. The fact that it qualifies as one is really kind of odd and amazing. There isn't a great deal to be said about The Goebbels Experiment other than it looks like these filmmakers slapped it all together. Essentially we get History Channel stock footage narrated by Kenneth Branagh. Branagh isn't in this in the least bit. He seems bored by what he's reading and does little to create a Goebbels character. Branagh is one of my favorites in the business and a great attraction to him is his voice but his voice isn't interesting enough to sit through just pure recitation without inflection or much interest.And the film has no narrative to speak of. It has a certain chronological order to the events but never do we get an understanding or staging of the links.What do I make of the diary? None of it really surprises me. Joseph Goebbels was a sadistic screwed up anti-Semite and surprise, surprise that's what the feeling we get here. Branagh's narration doesn't create a character even a monstrous Nazi as we might expect an actor to do.There isn't anything to comment on here. Some of the footage and Hitler's speeches are frightening to see as they always are but it isn't to the credit to anyone involved with these project. I find it amazing that it has a credited director when it should merely have a credited editor. Amidst all the horrible things Goebbels was responsible for you have to admit he was a far more competent filmmaker than the people behind this project.

Everyone once in a while a film comes along that people need to see. This is especially true concerning events of global consequence, Nazi Germany most specifically. And while films such as Schindler's List are invaluable in personalizing the tragedy of millions, they are emotionally based, as they should be. But what "The Goebbels Experiment" does is that it makes us think about why and how one man (and so many others) could come to bring about and participate in atrocities. The film doesn't talk much about the nature of the propaganda itself -- it's not a legit documentary about Goebbels, but a strict series of readings from his diaries -- but to hear Goebbels talking, we can hear echoes of the terrible propagandists that have brought about so much disaster in the years since. There is much to be learned from this film, particularly in seeing up close what could make a human being into a monster. It happens easier and more often than you'd think, and this film, while sometimes a bit dull and one-dimensional, does accomplish that purpose. You don't have to be an expert on World War II or Nazi Germany to appreciate the film, but it does help provide contextual understanding. I think this is a worthwhile film along the lines of any film about the Third Reich; the lessons must be learned, and the intervening years have proved just how much we have failed to learn them.

SPOILER: The Nazis lose World War Two.For my quids, Paul Joseph Goebbels was far and away the most interesting and complicated of the Nazi leaders. Goering and Himmler were motivated purely by self-interest; so was Speer, but he was also caught up in Hitler's cult of personality. Goebbels, on the other hand, was no mere stooge. He was an accomplished playwright and poet, who was committed to the National Socialist cause even before Hitler emerged as that cult's leader. In the diary which Goebbels kept from the 1920s until shortly before his death, he frequently questioned Hitler's leadership, and wondered if the movement was travelling the wrong way. (I'm astounded that Goebbels saved those diary entries after Hitler had consolidated his power.) Goebbels married a beauty queen, had six children off her, and juggled simultaneous affairs with multiple mistresses ... quite different from his boss Hitler, who was terrified of physical intimacy. If Goebbels had been the head Nazi, things might have ended very differently.The simple but riveting film 'The Goebbels Experiment' is constructed round a brilliant idea. Silent newsreel footage — depicting the rise of the Nazi movement, the Third Reich, its glorious zenith and then its inglorious downfall — is shown on screen while Kenneth Branagh reads entries from Goebbels's diaries in chronological order, making no attempt to 'perform' the text as a dramatic role. Goebbels's chilling words speak for themselves.For me, the most startling moment in this documentary occurred early on, when the Nazi party have successfully manipulated Germany's national election, becoming the duly-elected political force ruling Germany. When this happens, Goebbel openly exults (as did Hitler), saying that the last time he felt this excited was when the Kaiser declared war in 1914. I quite believe that Goebbels sincerely felt this way, but I was pulled up short by it ... because Germany's adventure of 1914 turned out to be a huge mistake, bankrupting the nation and destroying its national currency, as well as toppling the German royal family and humiliating the nation.Did Goebbels never for one instant stop to think that the Nazi triumph in the national elections might turn out to be as much of a 'victory' as the Kaiser's war declaration ... in other words, an utter failure? Evidently not. We know what happened next. There are no surprises in 'The Goebbels Experiment', but this documentary is train-wreck fascinating, and I strongly recommend it. A full 10 out of 10.