“If you love stories about families that stick together, love each other through thick and thin, and it all ends happily ever after … this isn’t the film for you, okay?”

In the animated world of The Willoughbys, streaming now on Netflix, truer words were never spoken by a narrator, who also happens to be a snarky cat with the voice of Ricky Gervais.

Unlike the few pages I read of the source material — the children’s book by Lois Lowry — the animated film necessitated a narrator to fill the audience in and, at times, nudge the story forward. The story, though, is not about the cat.

Our setting, for the most part, is an old-fashioned house in the middle of two gargantuan buildings in a modern metropolis; a city where “boring people living boring lives.”

Netflix’s animated The Willoughbys is a fun ride with spot-on voice acting but beware: what looks like perky kiddie fare has some pretty dark subject matter too

The family that lives in the house, The Willoughbys, are far from boring though. With lengthy, wool-like moustaches passed down through genetics, this family once sprung scientists, adventurers, poets and philosophers. Their present generation, alas, are far less ambitious.

Mr and Mrs Willoughby (Martin Short, Jane Krakowski) are a heaven-made pair. Their love for each other is shockingly and nauseatingly forthright: the two live to smooch in front of the camera. When not cooing each other with gargled mating calls, their other shared delight is to hate their offspring.

Immediately after birth, Tim (Will Forte) is sickeningly deposited on the hallway by Mr Willoughby, who wastes no time in lecturing the house rules to the googly-eyed baby: “I’m your father, and that sweet woman that you insulted with your rude birth is mother,” he tells baby Tim. “If you need love, I beg of you, find it elsewhere.”

Hating children, however, doesn’t mean that one stops producing them (the couple may not have heard about contraception), so Tim soon gains three siblings — a sensible, big-hearted sister named Jane (Alissa Cara), and the creepy-looking genius twins with a shared name of Barnaby (Sean Cullen).

With parents crueler than wicked step-parents, the children grow up on scraps of food and, perhaps, no education (we don’t see them going to school). Tim, particularly detested by his parents, is thrown in the house’s coal-bin on a near-nightly basis.

The cat intervenes, and the children start off on a series of adventures, first finding — and adopting — a hyperactive, weirdly pink-complexioned baby, then leaving the said baby on the steps of a billionaire candy tycoon’s house and, finally, getting the idea to ‘orphan’ themselves — as in making sure their cold-hearted parents bite the dust in the midst of an impossibly romantic vacation.

Yes, this is as macabre as it sounds. But fret not, it is and it isn’t.

Despite Netflix’s proclaiming The Willoughbys rated fit for children aged seven years and older, this crude mix of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Addams Family and Home Alone tries to hit two disparate demographics with one shot. The aim is slightly off-centre.

Adult-oriented jokes sneak in between frantically paced, children-friendly storytelling. The latter is further complimented by a bright, colour-dabbed palette, a keen, skewed production design (most every inanimate object in the frame is tilted at an angle), easy-to-draw character design and an animation style that is computer-generated but made to look somewhere between pencil-drawn and stop-motion.

Perky kiddie fare on the surface, I doubt the young ones would realise the story’s deeper connotations until they are older. Sudden shifts in plot do de-harmonise aspects of the film — especially the climatic point of the story — but having said that, it is a fun ride for the most part, with spot-on, acerbic voice acting.

Released by Netlfix, The Willoughbys is directed by Kris Pearn (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), written by Pearn and Mark Stanleigh (from a story by Pearn), and based on The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry.

The film is rated PG for crude humour and some adult themes that may jolt kids… or maybe give them the wrong idea about living a grand life by orphaning one’s own self. So yes, parents — especially evil parents — beware.

Published in Dawn, ICON, May 3rd, 2020