Featuring The Voices of: Johnny Vegas, Margo Martindale, Emilia Clarke,Sami Amber, Alan Tudyk, Natalie Portman, Maitreyi Ramakishnan, Jason Mantazoukas, Marc Proust, Nicole Byer
Written By: Phil Johnston and meg Avarau
Directed By: Todd Demong, Phil Johnston, Katie Shannahan
Release Year: 2025
Studio/Streaming: Netflix
Audio Description Produced By: Descriptive Video Works
Written By: David Chen
Narrated By: lex Mason
What is it?: A loose adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, featuring a pair of curmudgeonly and devious Twits who in this version find themselves crossing paths with a pair of orphan siblings who seek to find their place in this world, while the Twits cause general mayhem. There’s also a lot here about the Twits operating a failing theme park, elections, and creatures very reminiscent of Oompa Loompas. It’s a musical, and told from the perspective of two insects living inside the beard of Mr Twit.
Why It Doesn’t Work:There are some very different paths films take once they’ve fallen below the line. Sometimes a film is so incompetent that it just is a bad film. it isn’t rewarding on any level. On the other hand, some films take big risks, and end up being bad but somehow interesting in a megalopolis type of way. You can have films fall short because they just aren’t well funded, or directed, or written. They can be too derivative of other materials, have nothing to say, or simply be full of miscast actors struggling to read dialog.
then you have films that are simply just boring. Dull, lifeless, and uninteresting. For me, that was the Twits. As someone who has enjoyed some of Netflix’s less lauded animated fare like Vivo and Leo, I’m always of the belief I could enjoy something others might not. In this case, I assumed a Roald Dahl adaptation would strike my fancy. it does not.
And then, to find out how much this project deviated from Dahl’s original work, taking what appears to be a classic British book and making it decidedly American, while adding a bunch of things that were never in the original book. there are no orphans in the book. That’s just there to pull at your heartstrings. There also seems to be this desire to connect this world to the more well known Charlie and the Chocolate Factory through characters who are Mugglewumps.
this reminded me a lot of how Netflix is cannibalizing the characters of Dr. Seuss for the preschool set. Those shows have little to do with the books they come from, however they are also episodic adventures with recognizable characters doing things little kids might be interested. It is sort of a different animal altogether.
But there’s nothing that makes sense here. Why make this American, when you could have hired a studio like Aardman to make a film that might have been closer to the source material and still translated as a solid feature. While their last Wallace and Gromit certainly wasn’t my favorite Animated Feature of 2024, it was better than this.
It’s hard when you are cherry picking from source material, and then trying to align the things you decided to keep with these new things. While sometimes we make choices to help things seem more cinematic, there is something kind of audacious about these filmmakers taking it upon themselves to challenge a classic novelist like Dahl, and believe that their revisions will improve the work. Surely, this isn’t impossible, as music has been added to Dahl’s work, without sacrificing the material. But the music here is instantly forgettable. it reminded me of a lot of the songs we ended up with in Moana 2 and Mufasa last year, which no one really remembers. There are no ear worms, unlike some of the wonderful songs in Matilda the Musical or of course Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
There even seems to be a battle over the destruction of the identity of the Twits, as Johnny Vegas is British, and Margo Martindale is American. So, they tried to have their cake and eat it too. I suppose, because American audiences wouldn’t watch British actors? I could probably list a thousand examples, but you would think the sheer popularity of Harry Potter and the complete and total nature of his origin being decidedly not American,yet American audiences being obsessed, would indicate that a more faithful adaptation might have been the way to go.
But like i said, while all these paper cuts certainly didn’t help, the end result is that I was just bored. i had no desire to recommend this to anyone, and I never want to see it again. Is it the worst film of the year? Of course not. It isn’t even Netflix’s worst film. But it does feel like a film to be forgotten, and especially in awards season, the Twits will be slaughtered by Netflix’s inspired hit K-POP Demon Hunters.
The Audio description: There’s a lot happening here. Mostly, with all the fanciful fantasy creations, size relativity was the biggest thing for me. I felt like I wasn’t really sure between the Twits, orphans, Adults, Mugglewumps, and Beard Insects (what were they?), how much bigger or smaller were these things?
Why You Might Like it: you have a real obsession with Roald Dahl, and appreciate it when other people cannibalize his work to create an amalgamation of new ideas mixed with the brand awareness of title characters.
Why You Might Not Like it: If your kids have been watching K-POP demon Hunters on repeat, this isn’t interesting enough to get them to stop, and if anything will make you appreciate the music in that film even more.
Final Thoughts: A misguided adaptation of a Roald Dahl classic that strips its source material to barebones, but fails to rebuild it with anything better than what it already had before.
Rotten: 5.2/10