"Meet the Hitlers" is an intriguing idea...to interview various folks who have been named Hitler. However, the execution of the film left me confused and a bit cold. Part of it is because the focus of the picture was so diffuse. Part of it was because a few of the folks were just disgusting human beings and I didn't want to see them get any attention. Some of the folks in the film were born with the name Hitler and chose not to change it. Those folks and their decision NOT to change it I was curious about and wish the film had zeroed in on this exclusively. However, it also went off on tangents--such as a white supremacist jerk who recently named his kids Hitler, Aryannation and the like as well as the 'investigative journalist'. As for the journalist, he was curious about Adolf Hitler's surviving family who moved to the United States. Not surprisingly, they changed their last names and wanted anonymity. After all, they'd done nothing wrong...yet this writer insisted on dredging up their family past and even acknowledged that the surviving family members did NOT want any of this happen! A few of the folks named Hitler just seemed rather pathetic and uninteresting.Overall, the film has some fascinating moments but simply was a mess to watch due to the strange focus and featuring horrible folks (NOT born with the Hitler name) as well as those who didn't choose this name or notoriety. I really didn't like the film nor did I respect the filmmaker's choices.

Meet the Hitlers is a very absorbing documentary about the consequences of having a particular name--in this instance, that of the notorious and murderous Adolphe Hitler. We follow the story of several families of that surname, one whose ancestors came over to America from Germany in 1799, and whose lives changed for the worse during WWII, the family of the only known living family of Adolphe Hitler, that of his nephew, who fought for the United States in WWII and afterward changed his name, another family of a dying father and his teenage daughter who seem to be no relation, a racist and his wife named Campbell who named two of their children Adolphe Hitler and Himmler Campbell and had them taken away from them by Child Protective Services for the state of New Jersey, and a German man who claims to be a nephew of the Nazi leader, but whom Hitler family scholars maintain is no blood relation. Then there is an artist who makes his living by doing photographic studies of all the strange Hitler items one can buy in America today. What I found most interesting was that Hitler's actual nephew, who served under the family surname in WWII, thereafter changed it, and when a now elderly lady who went to the prom with one of his three sons was acquainted with the fact that her date had been Hitler's grandnephew, and was asked if she would have gone with him if she had known that then, answered probably not. It is a very revealing study that answers Shakespeare's age old question, "Would not that which we call a rose by any other name smell as sweet?" Here we find out.