Ricky Gervais co-produces and narrates this colourful, amusing and inventive kids cartoon, in which he plays a sneery blue cat who says things like, “Look at those boring people, leading boring lives. I’m not judging. Yeah, I am!”
Four siblings – Tim, Jane and twins, both called Barnaby – are stuck with horny and selfish parents and hatch a plot to orphan themselves, then encounter an adorable, genuinely unconventional nanny (Maya Rudolph).
Among many surprises, the film treats female facial hair as a good thing, graffiti on a wall is worthy of Banksy and the entertainingly vile parents prove irredeemable.
Though the film-makers are indebted to Edward Gorey and Lemony Snicket – and pay musical homage to Mark Mothersbaugh’s work on The Royal Tenenbaums – they find their own voice, when it counts.
