When Netflix paid more than £500m for the rights to the collected works of Roald Dahl in 2022, one might have assumed the streaming giant’s view of his writing was that it was, on the whole, pretty good. In its new animated adaptation of The Twits, however, it’s treated instead as a problem to be solved. Indeed, the only way The Twits (the film) could be any less like The Twits (the book) is if Mr and Mrs Twit weren’t actually in it.
In every other respect, Dahl’s style, tone and even basic plot are unrecognisable. Depressingly generic and very American – though the cutely grungy animation is pretty good – it jettisons the British author’s macabre humour and flair for the grotesque for talk of “hate” (as opposed to hatred) and empathy, some disposable David Byrne songs with lyrics such as “open your heart, how far we’ve come,” and repeated use of the word “butt” for comic effect. On its own merits, it’s an exercise in Boss Baby-level adequacy; measured against Dahl’s, it’s a staggering failure of custodianship.
