History WesternAnimation / TheWilloughbys

* AnAesop: As per the movie's tag line: "Family is what you make it."

* DebatingNames: As the Willoughby children are about to leave an orphan baby girl on the doorstep of Commander Meleonhoff, Tim and Jane debate giving her a name. Jane suggests naming the baby "Tiffinilla", but Tim names her "Ruth" since he and his siblings are [[StealthPun the ruthless Willoughbys]].

** Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby decide to do this when [[spoiler:they realize during their "vacation" that they much prefer life without children]], and then again when [[spoiker:their children come to rescue them]].

''The Willoughbys'' is an American computer-animated BlackComedy film directed by Kris Pearn, and based on the book of the same name by Lois Lowry. The film is about four siblings who have had it with their parents constantly neglecting them, so they send them away on a potentially life-threatening vacation only to end up in the care of an eccentric nanny, and must hide away from the draconian Orphan Services.

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: [[spoiler: You'd think saving Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby from certain death would finally [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe earn]] the children love, or even help them [[HeelRealization see the light]] that their kids need them to be good parents for once. ...Nope! They only repay their children's act of love by stealing the blimp and abandoning them to freeze to death on a mountain peak.]]

** Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby aren't given first names. They even refer to each other as Mother and Father. The cast listing calls them Helga and Walter, however.

* NoOSHACompliance: Colonel Melanoff is the only worker in his factory, which is a good thing because its automated production line has no safety railings and shut off switches are in the middle of wall sized control panels. The Nanny lampshades that it's not a good place to raise Ruth both because she can't only eat candy and [[{{Understatement}} it's not baby-proofed]].

* OneSteveLimit: Averted by the Barnaby twins, as Mother and Father couldn't be bothered to give individual names to them.
* OrphansOrdeal: The Willoughbys think this is preferable to their current situation of abusive parents until it actually happens and they're separated in the foster system to neglectful homes. [[spoiler: The Nanny is revealed to also be an orphan, and has painful memories of the same system being rejected from home after home.]]

** [[spoiler:Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby decide to do this when they have a lot of fun on their getaway and do this again when their children come to rescue them]].

** When Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby aren't being emotionally AbusiveParents to their kids, they're being this. The children are forced to eat leftovers, if their parents bother to leave any for them, they couldn't even be bothered with giving the Barnabys one sweater each or even individual ''names'', and they apparently never enrolled the kids in school. The ''only'' reason they bothered to hire Linda was to make sure that the kids didn't break anything while they were gone.

* PlatonicCoParenting: [[spoiler:The movie ends with the Willoughbys, Nanny, Commander Melanoff, and Ruth becoming one big, happy blended family, all living under the same roof and the two adults working together to raise the children. There is some ShipTease between them, but nothing's ever confirmed.]]
* QuirkyHousehold: [[spoiler: Linda, the Commander, Ruth, and the Willoughby kids are this after the latter are formally adopted]].

* RoadTripPlot: Nanny and the Willoughbys hit the road to evade social services.
* RoseHairedSweetie: The Willoughby children all have pinkish-red hair and , while not "perfect", they're always there for each other, and even [[spoiler: try to save their terrible parents at one point.]]
** Inverted with their parents.

** The Barnabys share a single sweater and will randomly switch it with one another. [[spoiler: Sadly, doing this on the mountain destroys it.]]
** Mother will find something inconveniencing her and forcing her to declare, "I can't knit!" It gets to the point that the tardigrades in Father's mustache also repeat the phrase.

* SelfMadeOrphan: Tired of their parents' neglect, the Willoughbys decide to indirectly make themselves orphans by sending their parents on a perilous vacation assuming they'll be killed or go missing.

* SocialServicesDoesNotExist: Averted big time. A big part of the plot involves the Willoughby kids trying to evade social services.
* SnowMeansDeath: [[spoiler: Played with. The Willoughby kids nearly freeze to death in a snow storm on the Swiss Alps after their parents abandon them. They're promptly rescued by Nanny, the Colonel, and Ruth though.]]
* SnowMeansLove: [[spoiler: Of the familial love variety. It's at the top of the snowy Swiss alps when the Willoughbys, Linda, Melanoff, and Ruth start to call each other family.]]

* StopFauxtion: The movie is an [[AllCGICartoon All CGI Cartoon]], but the animation looks like it's been done in Stop-Motion.
* StrongFamilyResemblance: The Willoughby siblings all resemble each other with their [[HairColorDissonance red hair.]]
* TalkingAnimal: The Cat voiced by Creator/RickyGervais is the film's narrator.

* TooHungryToBePolite: Jane eats an entire meatloaf in one bite when given the chance. Later, she and the Barnabys are wolfing downs Nanny's oats.

* WhatTheHellHero: [[spoiler: Everyone's reactions when it's revealed that Tim called CPS to rat out Nanny.]]
* WhamLine: [[spoiler: "Linda? [[OrphansOrdeal Is that you?"]]]]
* WrongAssumption: Tim and the Barnabys assume their nanny to be a one bad upon first glance and try to get rid of her, when in reality, she was doing all she could for them, though for the latter two, she soon wins them over. [[spoiler: It gets worse after he reads Linda's text response to the Willoughby's parents informing that they're selling the house (to stay on their vacation) and asking her to get rid of their children, with her replying that she would take care of him and his siblings, and he immediately jumps to conclusions that she's going to act on his parents' words and calls the Orphan Services on her. As it turns out, she wasn't planning anything like what he had thought, but by then, the services had already known.]]
* YankTheDogsChain: [[spoiler: After rescuing their parents from freezing to death on top of the Unclimbable Alp, the Willoughby children confessed their plans to get rid of them and started telling them to come home. Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby walked towards Tim, Jane, and the Barnaby twins, thinking they saw the errors of their ways. That is until Mr. Willoughby pushed his children out of the way and took his wife to the blimp. When the couple got inside, Mr. Willoughby accidently popped the blimp and left their children stranded.]]

* {{Irony}}: [[spoiler: It was the Willoughby children who sent their parents on a perilous vacation to die. And it is ultimately the same children who narrowly save their parents from said perilous vacation.]]
* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: [[spoiler: For a minute, it looks like the Willoughby parents have finally decided to change their selfish ways and be better parents towards their children after they confess their feelings about their behavior towards them and how they long for a proper family, and even that they were the ones that "orphaned" themselves. But, as it turns out, they didn't.]]

** The Cat, previously just a passive observer, directly intervenes in the plot halfway through at the viewer's (apparent) request.

* ManlyFacialHair: The Willoughby family is a long line of bold adventurers that all have big bushy mustaches, even the women, until Father Willoughby and his wispy pencil 'stache--though that might be partially because his knitting-obsessed wife harvests the hair to make yarn. Tim is obsessed with this along with the rest of his heritage, and it's the first thing he notices and respects about Commander Melanoff.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Tim after he accuses Linda of being a terrible nanny to the Department of Orphan Services and outright says that he doesn't want her, and ends up getting him and his siblings in foster care.]]
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler: After reading Nanny's text to their father, Tim is convinced that she's in league with their parents, so he reports her to CPS. But, as it turns out, she ''was'' going to actually take care of them, but by that time, the services had already already informed, and they expose Tim's exact words to her, driving her away. As for the kids, they ended up being taken away by the Orphan Services and put into separate homes, and Jane is left furious with Tim whom, after repeatedly running away from his foster homes, witnessing the sale and destruction of his family house, and being seemingly deemed "unplaceable" and confined to a cell at Orphan Services, is left wracked with overwhelming guilt over having inadvertently broken up his family.]]
* NoAntagonist: There's no major antagonist in the film. The Willoughby parents are simply selfish jerks, and the Department of Orphan Services may be scary-looking and authoritative, but their goal is to safely secure orphaned children.
* NewAgeRetroHippie: [[spoiler: Jane's foster family are hippies who believe in the "curative power of music" and spend their time singing and playing instruments, although none of this interests Jane, who is too upset about losing her home and brothers.]]

** The Barnabys are first seen [[SpeakInUnison speaking in unison]] and switching their shared sweater. This sums up their characters for the rest of the movie.

* FamilyPortraitOfCharacterization: There are portraits of Willoughbys of generations past. All of them are stiffly posing, and the men all have prominent mustaches. [[spoiler:The ending shows a portrait of the Willoughby children with Ruth, Melanoff, and Nanny -- a unique but happy and loving family]].
* FamilyTitle

* FuzzballSpider: Tim Willoughby encounters and shoots away a spider, which is a purple ball with eight eyes and eight legs, while in the coal bin.

* HappilyAdopted: Commander Melanoff adopts Ruth when he finds her on the doorstep of his factory. [[spoiler: At the end of the story, he and Linda the Nanny adopt the Willoughby children, becoming a great, loving family in the process]].

* HenPeckedHusband: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby love each other deeply but that doesn't stop her from making shrill demands of him that he complies to while barking like a dog. One particular example is her harvesting his hair to use as yarn for her knitting.

* InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals
** Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby's taxi driver and guides all look exactly alike, but considering how the couple's TooDumbToLive antics keep getting the guides killed, like knocking them into a piranha-filled river for instance, it's highly unlikely that they're the same individual.
** The Department of Orphan Services members that we see almost all look exactly alike.
* InSeriesNickname: Implied and zigzagged with Tim. As, once in the movie, the cat narrator called him ''Timothy'', his ancestor called him that in his ImagineSpot, and [[spoiler: he writes it on his adoption certificate.]] But in the beginning, it's shown that his father had named him Tim, and that was the only thing he ever gave him, other than his siblings.
* {{Irony}}: [[spoiler: It was the Willoughby children who sent their parents on a perilous vacation to die. And it is ultimately the same children who narrowly save their parents from said-vacation.]]

** The ''entirety'' of the Willoughby parent's EstablishingCharacterMoment is this in the first few minutes of the movie. They're shown being extremely happy with each other right up until tim's birth, whereupon mr Willoughby picks him up by the hair like he was a field doggie bag, takes him out into the hall, ''drops him onto the carpet'', condescendingly pats his head with his shoes to stop him cooing and making baby noises and says the following.

** [[spoiler:Even after their children save them from death, confess to their trick, and make a heartfelt speech about being a family, Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby ''shove'' them away to get inside the children's dirigible and abandon them again]].

* LaserGuidedKarma: [[spoiler: After everything Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby put their children through, the last we see of them is the two adrift in the middle of the ocean, about to be eaten by a shark.]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: All the Willoughbys' hair is depicted as red yarn and the Mother is wont to harvest her husband's to use as such for her knitting.
** The Cat directly intervenes in the plot halfway through, apparently at the viewer's request.

** Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby have swing music during their scenes
** The cat has jazz/blues

* ManlyFacialHair: The Willoughby family is a long line of bold adventurers that all have big bushy mustaches, even the women, until Father Willoughby and his wispy pencil stache- though that might be partially because his knitting-obsessed wife harvests the hair to make yarn. Tim is obsessed with this along with the rest of his heritage and it's the first thing he notices and respects about Commander Melanoff.
* MarshmallowHell: Nanny hugs Tim too enthusiastically.
* MaybeEverAfter: There is some subtle ShipTease between Linda and Commander Melanoff when they properly meet. [[spoiler:The ending doesn't confirm whether they're married but also doesn't deny it since they become the adoptive parents of the Willoughby children and Ruth]].
* MiddleChildSyndrome: To extremes. While they're annoyed by Tim and creeped out by the Barnabys, they seem to be unaware Jane even exists, up to ''not recognizing her name.'' Jane uses this to her advantage, though, making sure Tim takes the rap for her antics and possibly sneaking off to the city.

** The Barnabys saying "Hi, mommy" in a creepy manner. The first to their abusive, biological mother and the second to [[spoiler:Nanny, who they (along with Tim and Jane) want to be their adoptive mother]].

* DebatingNames: As the Willoughby children were about to leave an orphan baby girl on the doorstep of Commander Meleonhoff, Tim and Jane debated on giving her a name. Jane suggests naming the baby "Tiffinilla", but Tim names her "Ruth" since he and his siblings are the ruthless Willoughbys.
* DepartmentOfChildDisservices: The Department of Orphan Services are feared by the Nanny, who says giving an orphan to them is like locking a puppy in a cage. When they show up they're depicted as an intimidating group of gaunt, pale, near identical individuals that callously separate the Willoughby children and put them in oblivious households. After Tim repeatedly runs away from his homes, they end up detaining him in what's basically a holding cell with nothing to eat but oatmeal. [[spoiler:Partly subverted at the same time; the head of the D.O.S. is shown to care about all the orphans and will always try to put them with appropriate foster parents. Tim and Linda end up in the orphanage because they were rejected (or escaping) their foster parent homes. Even the oatmeal is explained to be prepared in such a way that it can be safely consumed by children.]]
* {{Deconstruction}}: Of the QuirkyHousehold. Visually, the Willoughbys' house feels like a callback to such iconic families with strong visual aesthetics as The Addams Family, but the heads of the Willoughby household are self-centered snobs that hold none of the warmth this archetype is known for. Their "quirkiness" and out-of-touch behavior is painted as negligence and stupidity, and their children suffer all the more for it. [[spoiler: Strangely enough, it is reconstructed at the end of the film, as the Willoughby children, Baby Ruth, Captain Mel, and Linda all make a QuirkyHousehold, albeit a loving and functional one.]]
** Also of the OrphansOrdeal. The Willoughby kids think that being orphans will immediately free them of their parents neglect and allow them free range to do as they like, even citing ''Literature/JamesAndTheGiantPeach'' and ''Literature/OliverTwist''. While it turns out that sending their parents' away did get them off their backs, it also turns out that the modern world the Willoughbys live in is much more strict than the worlds of those stories, and they are brought into child services as soon as they are discovered.
* DontSplitUsUp: [[spoiler: While the Willoughby children couldn't care less about not having their birth parents around, they were crushed when Child Services arrived to take the siblings to foster homes upon finding out they were orphans. The Barnabys were allowed to remain together but Jane and Tim were placed with two different families.]]
* DoorstopBaby: [[spoiler: Early in the film, someone dropped Ruth at the Willoughby residence and Tim does this again upon his parents' orders and leaves her at Commander Melanoff's doorstep.]]

* EasilyForgiven: [[spoiler: While not everything is shown, Orphan Services do not seem to hold Linda technically kidnapping multiple children against her or seek to take any legal action. They don't seem to have had any issue with Linda adopting them in the end.]]
* EmpathicEnvironment: After Jane is callously told to stop singing by her mother, the sky outside turns dark and threatening.

** Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby are seen deeply engulfed in wedded bliss-until Tim's unexpected birth sours their tempers.
** Tim is first seen admiring the hall of portraits and imagining he has a spectacular mustache of his own.
** Jane is introduced playing various instruments and singing before Tim tells her to shush.
** The Barnabys are first seen [[SpeakInUnison speaking in unison]] and switching their shared sweater.

* AccentsArentHereditary: The Willoughby kids have American accents but their parents sound vaguely English by contrast.

* AdaptationalJerkass: The Willoughby parents aren't the greatest in the book, of course, but the kids were taken to school, birthday parties, and the zoo. Here, they (except maybe Jane) haven't been out of the house in their lives.
* AdaptationalNameChange: A weird case. The book gives the parents' names as Helen and Frances, while castlist give them as Helga and Walter...except in the movie proper, they are ''exclusively'' known as Mother and Father.

* AgeLift: The book describes Jane as being the youngest of her siblings, the movie makes her the second oldest, with the Barnabys taking the spot as the youngest children.

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler: Mr. & Mrs. Willoughby. Mortem a turpis.]]

** [[spoiler: A particularly cruel example occurs late in the film when the kids rescue their parents from the Swiss alps. For a while it seemed like Mr. and Mrs Willoughby had a HeelRealization in regards to their poor parenting and were vowing to do better going forward... only for them to cruelly push their kids aside and steal their blimp, leaving their children stranded to likely death as a result.]]

* BannisterSlide: The Willoughby kids do this after their parents leave for vacation–though Tim has to scoot down.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: All the Willoughby children wanted was their parents to be gone. And they succeeded. It worked so well that said parents decided to abandon them completely... leading to troubles with social services.
* BeAllMySinsRemembered: [[spoiler: Tim believes he's unworthy of Linda coming to break him out of Orphan Services due to him being the one who got them and his siblings into the whole mess in the first place by calling the services on her due to his misunderstanding of her motives. It's even more established as seen by the numerous untouched bowls of oatmeal at his door, indicating his refusal to eat and possible desire to starve himself to death as comeuppance for his actions.]]

* BlackComedy: The [[AbusiveParents subject matter]] makes this undoubtedly one of the [[DarkerAndEdgier darker]] kids' films... And it's still mostly humorous and slapstick heavy - even when showing the abuse.

** Family portraits being shown -- The beginning showing whole walls of Willoughby ancestors; the ending shows one [[spoiler:of the Willoughby children with their new family of them, Nanny, Melanoff, and Ruth]].
** [[spoiler: A baby's first word being "Willoughby".]]
* BornInTheWrongCentury: The Willoughby family has a whole has shades of this, especially with the way that they live in an old-fashioned home surrounded by skyscrapers that they apparently almost never leave. The parents don't even initially know what the internet ''is'', the children have apparently never seen a television before, and Tim in particular wishes he could have been born into one of the earlier generations of Willoughbys, that were inventors, adventurers, etc.
* BothSidesHaveAPoint: Jane has every right to be mad at Tim for calling the CPA, accusing Linda of being a bad nanny, and getting them and their brothers taken away and separated from each other. Tim, on the other hand, calls Jane out for constantly getting him in trouble with their parents by leaving him to take the blame for her mischief and getting him thrown into their home's coal bin. The latter's attempt surprisingly is enough to convince Jane to forgive him.
* ABoyAGirlAndABabyFamily: [[spoiler: Technically it's three boys, one girl, and a baby family after the Willoughbys and Ruth get adopted but the same principle applies.]]

* ChildHater: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby are this, which makes them obliviously continuing to have them to abuse and neglect that much worse.

%%* CreepyTwins: The Barnabys (straight example).

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome : The film shows us what happens when children try to take care of themselves, especially from a neglectful household; since their parents couldn't be bothered to teach them ''anything'', the Willoughbys don't know how to make their own food or even heat the house and are shivering and starving before the Nanny shows up.

* CreepyTwins: The Barnabys (straight example).