Bad Parents (and guardians) in children’s stories are nothing new. In stories like Matilda, Harry Potter, and Hansel and Gretel, protagonists are forced into the so-called “care” of adults whose selfishness and neglect create a pattern of abuse meant to give the protagonists the fortitude and courage to break off on their own. All of this to say that Tim, Jane, and Barnabys A and B Willoughby are in good company when the movie opens.
Our narrator and guide through The Willoughbys (2020, Netflix) is a cat snarkily voiced by Ricky Gervais, who opens the film paraphrasing the Tolstoy line, “Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Willoughby family is unhappy because they have children. Mother (Jane Krakowski) and Father (Martin Short) Willoughby, who are never given names, love each other to the exclusion of everything else in the entire world, yet they can’t understand where these children keep coming from. The oldest child, Tim (Will Forte), loves being part of a long and glorious tradition of mustachioed Willoughbys.
Like many children of abuse, Tim is forgiving of his parents and continues to crave their affection even after he’s been thrown into the coal bin (for what we see is not nearly the first time) for committing the crime of asking for food. His siblings, Jane (Alessia Cara) and the twins Barnaby (Seán Cullen), seem either oblivious to their parents’ neglect or simply don’t care. The Willoughby siblings concoct a plan to accidentally-on-purpose get rid of their parents so they can become orphans, tricking Mother and Father into going on a vacation full of potentially lethal adventures. While the parents are gone, the children are put into the care of Nanny (Maya Rudolph), who provides more love and compassion to them than they are prepared to handle. A full-scale comedy of errors ensues wherein the children wind up having to track down their biological parents in order to stay with one another, but the parents would rather leave the children to die on their own.
