This bumpy and chaotic family film is centred around a child who feels different because she’s normal. There are notes of the Addams family and the Munsters in the home and living circumstances of Betty Flood (voiced by the Harry Potter actor Evanna Lynch), who belongs to a family of magical characters living in exile but is herself not supernaturally gifted. Unless you count her wildly impressive skills playing the violin, performing – for instance – a ripping rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In.
The plot swings into gear when she plays a forbidden song that alerts sinister beings from a far-flung world – filled with goblins, sorcerers and the like – to her kin’s whereabouts. This world can be visited by boarding a gigantic “worm train” with teeth and a long, disgusting tongue.
Throughout its 86-minute runtime this anarchic production evoked deep, ruminative thoughts such as “huh?” and “what the hell?” It’s a shame the first act’s energy dissipates as it progresses, let down by a frustratingly fickle plot populated by characters (several drawn from Colin Thompson’s popular children’s books The Floods) that are quite blandly developed.
My Freaky Family begins in snowy wilderness. Before Betty’s birth, her parents Aneska (Miranda Otto) and Nerlin (Ardal O’Hanlon) escape from little enemies with red laser guns, firing pew-pew-pew at their husky-led cart as it roars away. Aneska has a beanie-like hat that appears to be sentient, with eyes and a mouth; I know not why. The baddies pursue them, taking orders from a half-human, half-insect (I’m not aware of its correct binomial name) with eight arms, which can transform into black vapour that hangs in the air, periodically forming a face.
While all this is happening Aneska and Nerlin chat about what they will call their baby. Which is actually quite funny and audacious: an action scene becoming – apropos of nothing – a domestic debate. “Is it a hard no on Sharon, or more of a maybe? asks Nerlin, who spectacularly concludes this prologue by playing a violin that shoots colourful light and quickly defeating the baddies. You might wonder why he didn’t just do that in the first place. The power of music is a key theme; by the end it has been mashed into your face like a custard pie.
The story then jumps forward and briefly settles, with Betty now 12 and feeling awfully average. Her siblings include twins reminiscent of the creepy sisters from The Shining and a lanky brother, Winchflat (Ed Byrne), who shares with Betty the forbidden song that kickstarts the plot. We learn that Betty’s grandfather – Aneska’s mother – is the twisted King Murkhart (Richard Roxburgh), who truly hates Nerlin and will stop at nothing to drag Aneska back to his kingdom.
I was with the film, or sort of with it, for a while, its sheer kookiness compensating for wobbly writing and an animation style that looks a bit cut-rate. Things take a turn for the worse about 30 minutes in when the movie introduces a huge slab of backstory, painting the details of an ancient war between two peoples battling with magic and music. They formed a truce, which after many years was broken, and blah blah blah; it’s hard to believe anybody, of any age, will find this interesting.
For me the film never quite recovered, even when visiting the magical world, where Betty ultimately must rescue her family. And while it remains capital-Z zany, My Freaky Family becomes awfully mawkish, in the end dropping dialogue that makes you want to hold your nose: “You are simply magic.”
My Freaky Family is out now in Australian cinemas
