★

Phil Johnston’s new take on The Twits – the first in a slate of animations from the now Netflix owned Roald Dahl Story Company – is revolting. Seriously so. If only that were a compliment. It should be. Dahl’s original was, after all, supremely revolving. In the very best way. Wormy spaghetti, gristly beards, warts and frogs, all packed into a brisk ninety-five pages. Perhaps, revolving is, then, the wrong word. Unwatchable. That’ll cut it.

To Dahl’s credit, Johnston’s film bares almost no resemblance The Twits you grew up with. It is a car crash of a flop, entirely of its own design, narrative and crass Americanisation. Relocated to the fictional city of Triperot, the film retools Mrs. Twit (Margo Martindale) as a mid-Western junkyarder, while bizarrely retaining Mr. Twit (Johnny Vegas) as an English northerner, and offers spurious plot expansion by gifting them stewardship over a ramshackle theme park. This is the immediately condemned Twitlandia, a woeful dump, powered by the tears of upside down Muggle-Wumps. There’s an orphanage nearby and two dispiritingly earnest orphans who will surely save the day.

Quickly boring of its own plot momentum – albeit not so quickly as the viewer – The Twits alts right towards lame satire. Swipes at Trumpist populism neither enjoy the sharpness warranted for the real world horror – ‘I think it’s high time we make some promises we’ve no intention of keeping’ – nor feel suitable for the target audience. Promising to make Triperot the fun capital of the world again, The Twits fleece the mindless locals – all grownups – and run for mayoralty.

In truth, malapropism is the least of The Twits’ worries. Johnston’s script, co-written with Meg Favreau, fails to raise so much as a solitary laugh from open to close. There’s a diarrhoea gag that comes close but is killed through excess labouring. Dull songs – by Talking Heads’ David Byrne – die in dismal execution, while the empathy message misses the point by a mile. The animation is technically proficient but artistically ugly. There’s just no redeeming this rubbish.

T.S.