Directed by Kris Pearn
Produced by Brenda Gilbert & Luke Carroll
Screenplay by Kris Pearn & Mark Stanleigh
Story by Kris Pearn
Based on The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
Starring Will Forte; Maya Rudolph; Alessia Cara; Terry Crews; Martin Short; Jane Krakowski; Seán Cullen; Ricky Gervais
If you’re read or seen Lemony Snickets—A Series of Unfortunate Events then you’ll be on familiar ground here. It’s the tale of some children, horrifically yet comically abused and neglected by various adults. There’s a girl who is the common sense of the group, a boy who is the flighty genius, and the baby gets split into a pair of fairly creepy little twins who are utterly interchangeable.
The entire family derives their humanity from being able to grow big, bushy red moustaches, but the ability petered out with this set of parents.
The parents are madly, obsessively in love with one another, and are vaguely irritated by the fact that there are young children tramping about the house and interrupting them for cries for food and other such luxuries. The kids finally figure out that they would be better off in that draughty old mansion without the parents, and fake up a travel brochure which successfully entices the parents to embark on a tour of some of the most remote (and dangerous) parts of the world.
They managed to get the parents to hire a nanny, who is a cross between Mary Poppins and a Panzer tank, and all but the older boy settle in for a siege of relative normalcy. The children, now fed, go off exploring and meet the head of a local candy factory who is, you guessed it, a cross between Willie Wonka and someone from Yellow Submarine.
But the boy doesn’t like the Nanny, and shops her to “Orphan Services” for being a “bad nanny”, just as the parents realize they are low on funds and put the house up for sale. Thus the stage is set for a strange but beguiling story.
In the end, the story ends happily, if oddly, with future bliss assured by the fact that the girl is sporting red stubble on her upper lip. (Nobody in this family has beards, nor chins upon which beards may cultivate).
The artwork is utterly unique, and despite the similarity of some of the plot elements, the story is original. The narrator is a large blue cat with no connection to this family other than that he likes to watch people being weird, and the cat, for all that he has lived his life in a major North American city, speaks with an east London accent (Ricky Gervais, having a delirious time slumming).
The film is definitely aimed at young children, but is peculiar enough that adults will find it amusing.
Now on Netflix.