Roald Dahl's nasty sense of humour ought to make The Twits an unusually sharp animated family film. Mr. and Mrs. Twit are a grotesque couple who delight in humiliating each other and making everyone around them miserable. Their amusement park, Twitlandia, gives that cruelty an entire playground. Two orphans and a family of magical animals stand against them. The premise has plenty of room for invention, but the film does not turn all of it into a satisfying story.
A playground of visual tricks
The animation is the strongest element. Twitlandia is packed with strange details, exaggerated designs and unpleasant surprises. There is an appealing willingness to make the world ugly and chaotic rather than conventionally cute. Some of the pranks have the unruly energy this material needs, and the animators clearly enjoy inventing things to discover in the frame. As a sequence of visual ideas, the film can be entertaining.
A story that struggles to connect
The problem is the movement between those ideas. The plot often feels assembled from sketches rather than developed through convincing cause and consequence. Characters arrive, disappear and return when the next gag requires them. That makes the adventure clunky even when the individual moments are lively. The two young heroes should provide an emotional centre, but they remain too thinly drawn for their courage or friendship to carry much weight. Being more sympathetic than the Twits is easy; becoming memorable people is harder.
Not quite as cruel as Dahl
The tone is equally uncertain. The film reaches for the nastiness of Dahl's imagination, then softens it into safer, noisier entertainment. That leaves it between a genuinely dark comedy and a broad children's adventure without fully committing to either. The voice performances are solid, but the cast is given too little distinctive material to overcome the shallow characterisation. The energy keeps rising while the emotional involvement stays fairly flat.
Verdict
The Twits has enough oddness and visual invention to entertain children looking for a loud, mischievous adventure. I wanted more of the sharpness, character and emotional substance promised by its source. It is not a complete failure, but the memorable designs cannot hide how uneven the storytelling is. My rating is 4 out of 10.