Everything that makes a Roald Dahl story fun, from the characters to the world building to the dialogue, has been surgically removed from this absolute train wreck of a film. One of the worst screenplays I think I've encountered in the past few years. Is Meg Favreau Jon Favreau's daughter? Is that how she got this gig?
Disorganized from the start, it begins in medias res but in a way that does not add any tension or suspense. We are repeatedly told-not-shown, and not even in a fun Dahl-ian way, just in characters robotically stating "this is good" "this is bad" "I like her because she is nice and cool." Despite treating its audience like babies, the script jumps all over the place in a confusing and jarring way with no control of tone. Visually, it promises to be a feast, but the faces of the clearly-meant-to-be sympathetic characters are so disturbingly and poorly done I don't want to look at them and instinctually I find myself wishing ill upon them. It's just not nice or fun to look at.
A disaster on every front, it begs the question, why was this an adaptation at all? I have no issue with updating and changing source material but even tonally, thematically, this is unrelated to the original Twits. The answer is likely "this was the only way we could trick people to watch it."
My four year old got bored of it and asked to switch it off within three minutes. Let yourself have fun and go watch The Boxtrolls instead, which feels like a closer relation in terms of tone and quality to the original The Twits than this putrescent adaptation does.
