Netflix’s new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s twisted children’s novel The Twits looks refreshingly different to most animated movies, with its skew-whiff images and tactile, stopmotion-like aesthetic. The walls of buildings curve, character features are exaggerated, and the colours are incongruous, poppin’ bright pinks and blues clashing with earthy hues. It looks a bit, well, naughty—which is exactly what you want from a Dahl adaptation.
There is however one significant exception: the monkey characters known as “Muggle-Wumps,” which readers of the book will recall as mischievous little scamps who, imprisoned by the feral Mr and Mrs Twit, eventually free themselves and exact spectacular revenge. In the film, from Ralph Breaks the Internet director Phil Johnston, the Muggle-Wumps look nothing like the lank simians sketched by the book’s illustrator, Quentin Blake. They look cutesy in a very conventional way, like plush toys that’ve fallen off the assembly line.
The presence of these furry critters—so benign they produce balls of magical bioluminescent dandruff—speaks to the central tension in this movie: to be playfully wacky, like those curvy buildings and clashing colours, or safe and homogenised, like the monkeys? To indulge in faux-macabreness, or divert to gloss and sentiment? Unsurprisingly, this film is at its best when it’s truly Dahlian: sour not sweet, puckish not preachy, embracing an impishly rambunctious spirit.
But that tension can be felt everywhere—even in the personalities of the lead characters. On one hand, we have the irredeemably bad Mr and Mrs Twit (voiced by Johnny Vegas and Margo Martindale), who prank each other daily and, when their shoddy backyard theme park is closed down, take vengeance by flooding the city with rancid hotdog meat. On the other, we have two wide-eyed and morally pure orphaned children, Beesha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Bubsy (Ryan Anderson Lopez), the former—the older of the pair—determined to rid the world of wrongdoing and save those squishy monkeys.
The film is narrated by a bug in Mr Twit’s beard, which sounds pretty wacky, but is actually just a bit of dressing for a cookie-cut bedtime story format. Speaking to her cute lil baby larva, the narrator, early on, notes that a song is coming up, which her bub isn’t keen on. Settle down, she says, insisting that it’s “not a musical…it’s one song.” That song is a spirited number in which the Twits cruise down a city street, blabbering about boring people and their boring lives, proclaiming that “we’re not like everyone else” and “we’re the only ones out here who are free” (you just know these guys would be anti-vaxxers).
But did the narrator lie to us? There are other songs, including one very soapy number performed by a Muggle-Wump. Here’s a taste of the lyrics: “In dreams you are safe. In dreams you are free. In that beautiful place, close your eyes and you’ll see. The flowers that smile, the sun it will shine…”
If you check the soil in the churchyard of St Peter and Paul in Great Missenden, the English village where Roald Dahl is buried, you’ll no doubt notice that it’s been recently disrupted—the great author rolling in his grave. Johnston must’ve realised that this scene was a shocking violation of the spirit of Dahl’s work; the scene feels almost spiteful in its sweetness.
And yet, this film does bounce back into naughty delirium, for instance with a plot development involving the Twits being elected as mayors, after their key opponent eats putrid food and experiences a near-fatal blowout. This isn’t in the book, but it’s a fun way to flesh out the narrative, with some Trump-era commentary about horrible people being elected and then—shock horror—behaving horribly.
Should we be grateful that the titular cretins didn’t get a redemption arc, seeing the error of their ways, and vowing to become better people? Maybe. The ghost of Roald Dahl can only stand so much.
