BEFORE: OK, today is the LAST day of May so I've got one final film for the month, then I'm on to Father's Day material, I think. It's 21 days away, sure, so let's see how many father-based films the chain has picked for me, I know it's at least three, but fathers kind of turn up everywhere, and sometimes when you least expect them to. I've got 19 films to watch in those 21 days, so I still have two skip days available to me, I will try to get through the first week of June without burning one, as I may be busiest during the second week of the month. Again, I'll keep an eye on actor birthdays to see if that gives me any more insight over lining up the films with the calendar. The secondary goal is to review "The Mandalorian & Grogu" before the end of next month.
I've only watched 16 movies in May, here's the format breakdown:
MAY
6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Gridiron Gang, The Smashing Machine, Marty Supreme, Jules, Big Miracle, Bad Moms
4 watched on Netflix: Spiderhead, Wake Up Dead Man, Matilda: The Musical, The Twits
2 watched on Hulu: Thelma, Lee
2 watched on Disney+: Zootopia 2, Honey We Shrunk Ourselves!
2 watched on Peacock: Wicked, Wicked: For Good
16 TOTAL
Dee Bradley Baker carries over from "Wicked: For Good", where he voiced Chistery, the leader of the Flying Monkeys.
THE PLOT: Two orphans join forces with a family of magical animals to save their city from the powerful Mr. and Mrs. Twit - the meanest, smelliest, nastiest people in the world.
AFTER: Just my luck, this is another film based on a Roald (Ronald, really) Dahl book - a beloved children's classic that, much like his other books, was extremely weird and out there and blew people's minds back before the Reagan era. Apparently he wrote the whole book just to prove that people with beards are nasty. Well, he wasn't wrong. Dahl was also very adamant about nobody, ever, EVER changing anything about his book "The Twits", but still in 2023 Penguin Books went in and changed a whole bunch of passages because, well, some ideas and some themes in the book were not crucial to the main story. Also kids were deemed unworthy of learning about foot warts and men keeping bits of their breakfast in their beards so they could have a snack later.
Then the film company changed a BUNCH more things apparently, and again, Roald Dahl insisted that nobody ever change his written words, so they changed a bunch of his IDEAS when they made the movie. A-HA, he never forbid that at all, so let's all take advantage of the dead author thanks to a technicality.
The Twits are a horrible married couple, who hate everyone and also each other - they are retired circus monkey trainers, and they want to open up their own theme park, called Twitlandia. They constantly prank each other by hiding worms in plates of spaghetti, and they also keep a live toad in their bed. If you lick the toes of the toad, your personality becomes "opposite" of what it was before, remember that because it could be important later. The Twits also use a very sticky glue called "Hugtight" to catch birds to Mrs. Twit can bake them into pies - and when we first see them in this film, they're stealing a giant truck filled with liquid hot dog meat, and they fill the town watertower with that, until it explodes and fills the town with stinky liquid meat by-products.
The Twits also keep a family of magical animals called Muggle-Wumps captive, in the book it's because they want to create a circus act of upside-down monkeys, but in the film the monkeys are kept standing on their heads because that makes them cry, and their tears power the electrical supply to the Twitlandia Park somehow. The movie adds a couple of kids who live at a city orphanage, who want to both solve the mystery of who filled the water tower with hot dog meat (which was done in revenge for their team park being shut down after MANY health and safety violations) but also they want to free the Muggle-Wumps once they learn about them. And because these two kids, Beesha and Busby, are filled with childlike compassion, they can understand what the Muggle-Wumps are saying.
The Twits get arrested because Beesha recorded them with her body-cam, admitting to their hot dog meat-related crime. However they are soon bailed out by a family who want the town to be fun again, like it was in times past, and the Twits also promised everyone a million dollars if they can be allowed to re-open their park and charge admission again. The Twits go right to the orphanage and try to get their Muggle-Wumps back, first by promising to "adapt" orphaned Beesha, then by threats. But as we learned in "Matilda", Mr. Dahl believed that it's OK for kids to be nasty to adults if the adults are nasty to them first - so the orphans trick the Twits into jumping out the window.
The Twits then feel the only way they will get their park open and the Muggle-Wumps back is to run for mayor in the upcoming election, and they do this by feeding the current mayor, Wayne John Jon-Jon, a cake made with laxatives, which causes his butt to explode. Classy. Beesha tries to crash the election, but it's too late, the Twits have promised everyone in the town money and success and so much winning that they may all get TIRED of winning (sound familiar?) so the Twits become co-mayors of the town, and they are now free to steal their animals back and also tear down the orphanage in revenge, or at least move it to someplace very inconvenient.
During their first performance at the re-opened Twitlandia Park, Beesha manages to get both Twits to lick the Sweet Toed Toad's toes, so they immediately become their opposites, a pair of decent-minded people who let captive animals loose and apologize for their misdeeds by blowing up all of their amusement park rides. But even this is not enough revenge for Beesha (she's such a Matilda, really...) so she pranks the Twits by rearranging their living room furniture on the ceiling, as if the room is upside down. The stupid Twits then determine that they are, in fact, standing on the ceiling and not the floor, and they need to stand on their heads to correct things. Well, that would be the first time blood made it to their brains, at least - and when they stand on their heads, they find that they are glued to the floor thanks to that very strong glue they used before to trap birds.
The orphans celebrate, they have finally defeated the Twits and saved the Muggle-Wumps, however now that they have enacted vengeance on the Twits, their childhood innocence is GONE and they can no longer understand what the animals are saying. Well, karma is a bitch, isn't it? So they decide to SAVE the Twits, who are in danger of dying from the "Dreaded Shrinks", which is what happens when you stand on your head for too long, your neck shrinks into your head, your legs shrink into your body, and eventually you disappear by collapsing into your own body.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the entire story is told by Pippa, a female firefly, to her infant son as a bedtime story, near the end when the Twits fly off because of a helium balloon prank, Pippa and her son can be seen flying out of Mr. Twit's beard, which is where they've been the whole time. Umm, sure. The orphanage is returned to its original location, and the town is a FUN capital destination again, because the Muggle-Wumps vomit out these little florbnorble characters when they get anxious, and they've been so very anxious lately. Apparently the florbnorbles are lots of fun when you have so many of them. And the Twits end up in Loompaland (where the Oompa Loompas come from, I'd wager) and get eaten by a gigantic Sweet-Toed Toad. That seems about right.
This is the best sort of story to tell with an animated film - a lot of the stuff that happens here would be IMPOSSIBLE to film in live-action. So sure, make it into an animated film, however it's still quite a lot of silly things happening, and the narrative is bound to pale by comparison to other films that aren't packed up with wall-to-wall nonsense as this is.
Directed by Todd Demong, Phil Johnston (director of "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Katie Shanahan
Also starring Johnny Vegas (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Margo Martindale (last heard in "Stop-Loss"), Emilia Clarke (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Sami Amber, Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (last seen in "Freakier Friday"), Ryan Anderson Lopez, Phil Johnston (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Jason Mantzoukas (last heard in "Dolittle"), Riley King, Zarah Kulczycki, Rebecca Wisocky (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Mark Proksch (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Della Saba (last heard in "Wish"), Nicole Byer (last seen in "Thelma"), Charlie Berens, Stephanie Escajeda, Natalie Portman (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "Draft Day"), Israa Zainab, Erika Dapkewicz, David Byrne (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Scott Whyte (last heard in "Tom & Jerry"), David Cowgill, Hayley Williams,
RATING: 4 out of 10 news updates from Beverly Onion
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