The Willoughbys (2020)
Directed by Kris Pearn
When the four Willoughby children are abandoned by their selfish parents, they must learn how to adapt their Old-Fashioned values to the contemporary world in order to create something new: The Modern Family.
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5 films that influenced The Willoughbys
What critics say influenced The Willoughbys
Then again, thanks to Henry Selick (“Coraline”) and the “Despicable Me” franchise, there’s ample precedent for macabre tales for tots, packaged such that they don’t actually seem all that sinister.
If you look at a similarly structured film in Coraline , I get to know her way better than any of the kids here.
From Dickens to Disney to Dahl, and most recently franchises like Despicable Me and Laika films like Coraline, there always has been a sense of foreboding in many tales aimed at the youngest among us.
His sharp but relaxed delivery of his lines as the on-screen narrator of the story feels very reminiscent of Keith David’s portrayal of the mysterious black cat in 2009’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, but rather than feel like a straight rip-off, it feels like Gervais brings his own unique take on the similar role.
I suspect that screenwriters Pearn and Mark Stanleigh gleaned inspiration from classics such as Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach and Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
Why they didn’t just write a check to Laika (“Coraline,” “Paranorman”) or another check to Aardman (“Sean the Sheep”) escapes me.
The movie is narrated by a sarcastic cat voiced by Ricky Gervais, who begins by scoffing at stories of family togetherness, and the sour tone masking a sweet lesson about makeshift family owes a lot to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was, of course, adapted into a successful Netflix show.
As the opening narration begins, a talking cat (Ricky Gervais) warns us, resembling Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events”: “If you’re interested in stories with happy endings, you’re better off reading some other book.
Imagine a Roald Dahl-type story of clever children circumventing monstrous adults, wrapped in a gothic tone of morbid absurdism not unlike Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events .
Deliciously gruesome (but not quite as much as A Series of Unfortunate Events ), it is the story of four red-headed siblings who live in a gothic mansion squeezed between skyscrapers, with acid narration from a nearby cat (Rickey Gervais).
If you’re sensing references to Roald Dahl et al. (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Mary Poppins” and so on), you’re not mistaken: The movie isn’t quite so intricately indebted to classic children’s tales as its kid-lit source, but it definitely relies on the well-established tradition of tween-targeted literature to spin its own narrative so efficiently.
Commander Melanoff is a bit of a Willy Wonka figure, although the movie is closer to Burton’s version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than it is to the more psychedelic 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
But despite the overwrought physical comedy and cartoony character design that shares DNA with “Hotel Transylvania,” it’s hard to tell whom the intended audience is — especially with references to “Deliverance” and tardigrades.
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Sin grandes innovaciones, pero con un carácter fuertemente sentimental y empático, Kris Pearn realiza el título junto a la colaboración de Cory Evans y Rob Lodermeier, y tras haber trabajado en otras producciones como Arthur Christmas o Colegas en el bosque.