The Twits are the worst. Mrs. Credenza S. Twit (Margo Martindale, gloriously awful) and Mr. James T. Twit (Johnny Vegas, gleefully disgusting) hate each other so expertly that it is love reviled and redefined. It is there play land of fun and torture— their dream legacy to the world. The Twitlandia they erect is their monument to their antipathy and capitalist dreams.
Phil Johnston directs with tongue firmly-planted in cheek, converting Roald Dahl’s titled novel, a slim take of his, into a sprawling anarchic fable that has its tongue firmly in its creek. The film is told through a cockroach named Pippa (Emilia Clarke) reciting the fractured bedtime story to her son Jeremy. The family lives inside Mr. Twit’s long, unkempt beard. The tale is filled with everything kids secretly want in these stories—orphans, farts, belches, rude things happening, talking monkeys and frogs, lots of pink slime, projectile vomiting and sentient furballs,
Beesha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Bubsy (Ryan Lopez) are the orphans. Their friendship is the film’s moral compass, guiding the audience through betrayal, yearning and the painful construction of their community. Their compassion unlocks the tender language of the Muggle-Wumps—Maternal and paternal monkey-figures (Natalie Portman and Timothy Simons). These creatures, whose tears provide Twitlandia’s energy and economic engine, become The Twits icons of resistance and ceremony.
True to their name, The Twits are not only foolish, but are greedy, cruel and grotesque. Their rise to power, manipulations of the townsfolk with promises that the park would revitalize their community and make them billionaires–is a satiric slap at capitalist depravity.
The title “The Twits” becomes a mirror reflecting the couple and the community that cheers for them, the systems that make them possible, and even those who laugh with them.
The film does diverge from the Dahl’s source. The original was a chamber piece of pranks and retribution. Johnston’s version is an opera filled with karmic consequence. He expands the world with cockroach narrators, backward speaking toads, and industrialized tears. Some of it works. The upside-down living room trick is a triumph of visual storytelling. The weak link—the musical numbers by David Byrne feel pasted on.
Yet, the film hits where it counts. It sympathizes with the orphan’s loneliness. It acknowledges their pain without being sentimental. It shows how love is erected from shreds. How adopted families are chosen in devastation. The climax, where Beesha saves her new family from exploitation, is both absurd and touchingly true. The Twits are defeated not by violence, but by absurdity, compassion and glue.
Grade: B+ Streaming on Netflix.
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