A whirlwind for the kids
Animated adventure offers dysfunctional and dark family fun
THE WILLOUGHBYS
out of 5
Cast: Will Forte, Alessia Cara, Ricky Gervais
Director: Kris Pearn, Cory Evans, Rob Lodermeier
Duration: 1 h 30 m
Almost lost amid the discussion of Netflix at the Oscars this year — the streaming service had multiple nominations with the likes of Marriage Story, The Irishman and The Two Popes — was the fact that it picked up 40 per cent of the nominations for best animated feature, with Klaus and I Lost My Body.
It’s back with another hopeful this week. And while The Willoughbys may not quite make Oscar’s cut — though who knows what the COVID -19 edition of Hollywood’s top awards will bring? — it remains a manic, candy-coloured confection that will easily stave off the kids’ quarantine cabin fever for an hour and a half.
The story, based on the short novel by Lois Lowry, follows a group of siblings who hit on the idea of sending their neglectful mother and father on a danger-filled vacation from which they’ll never return. It’s Lemony Snicket meets The Parent Trap, if that had been a story about a bear trap and not a let’s-reuniteour-divorced-parents trap.
Truly the parents in The Willoughbys, voiced by Martin Short and Jane Krakowski, are bad caregivers and not merely misunderstood. Besotted with each other to the exclusion of all others including their progeny, they can barely tolerate the kids, who they regularly banish to the coal cellar. The youngest, twins (Seán Cullen and Seán Cullen), are forced to share not just wardrobe but a name: Both are called Barnaby. The fact that the parents look like brother and sister and call each other Mother and Father just makes their shenanigans all the more creepy. But what child hasn’t been grossed out by their parents kissing, assuming they didn’t accidentally blunder into something even more intimate?
Will Forte and Alessia Cara give voice to elder siblings Tim and Jane, whose plan initially goes off without a hitch — they dangle a homemade travel brochure in front of the parental units, who obligingly decamp. But into the parenting power vacuum steps a discount nanny (Maya Rudolph) who — as fictional nannies are wont — soon proves herself far more able than the parents.
The story is a bit of a madcap whirlwind that may exhaust the patience of older viewers. Among the apparently random elements are a Willy Wonka-type figure voiced by Terry Crews, an orphan baby left on the Willoughbys’ doorstep and a cat (Ricky Gervais) who narrates the whole thing as only the sardonic Brit can.
It’s spinning too fast to hold together perfectly, but The Willoughbys provides some decent chuckles. In one scene, Tim decides to name the infant orphan Ruth, because he plans to pass it along to someone else, thus making him and his siblings “the Ruth-less Willoughbys.” And you have to admire a film that stakes out such dark, dismal territory and sticks to it to the end. OK — spoiler alert — almost to the end.