YMMV / The Willoughbys

• Adorkable:
  • Tim is a skinny nerd who's eager about the long and proud history of his family and he's adorable when he's flustered.
  • Jane is a Cute Bookworm who likes to sing to herself.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Do Nanny and Commander Melanoff become a couple? The ending makes it easy to assume they will, as they raise their adopted children together and share a house, and they obviously really like each other, but they never go beyond hugging on-screen, and nothing is ever confirmed — so it's also easy to also interpret it as a Platonic Co-Parenting setup.
• Awesome Music:
  • The little melody by Mark Mothersbaugh for Jane, the song in her heart. She hums it frequently and it builds up into "I Choose", which Jane sings just as all four Willoughby children are going to freeze to death.
  • Jane's voice actress, pop singer Alessia Cara also sings the full version of "I Choose" over the end credits. It's a neat, retro-tinged rendition and remains faithful to the original tune.
• Catharsis Factor: After everything they did to their children, you will most likely feel sadistic glee towards Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby being eaten by a shark.
• Creepy Cute: The Barnabys when they're acting particularly cheerful.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The humor in this movie is dark, Tim and Jane's talk of "orphaning themselves" to be rid of their parents being a standout. It's so audacious that you can't help but laugh. (It also helps that their parents are genuinely monstrous, and have neglected, abused, and starved the children their whole lives; if any children have earned the right to cheerfully send their parents to what they hope will be their deaths, it's these ones.)
• Moral Event Horizon: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby thoroughly cross it when they coldly pushed aside their children on top of the Swiss alps to take the dirigible the children used to come and save them to leave the mountain. Stranding the children to an almost certain death!
• Nausea Fuel: The parent's overaffection for each other, coupled with their ghasty treatment of their children.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The guide's deaths.
  • The extent of the sheer vitriol Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby display towards their children is quite discomforting, even if some of it is Played for Laughs - to say nothing of them abandoning the kids to what would have been an icy demise.
  • The kids nearly freezing to death.
• Squick:
  • Ruth vomiting after eating too much candy.
  • Tim wetting himself after nearly getting run over by a bus.
  • The cat licking himself in The Stinger. Not to mention his moaning...
• The Woobie:
  • The Willoughby children as they are emotionally neglected by their selfish parents.
  • Nanny real name Linda counts as one.

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