This film is the most disappointing film I've seen so far of 2020. When I saw the trailer, I thought it didn't look too bad. The art style, premise, and characters looked quirky enough, the song sounded catchy and was quite excited to see it. Unfortunately, what I got was a contrived and quite familiar mess of a film.
Besides Jane and the cat, the characters all range from annoying to blandly mediocre. The nanny and Commander Melanoff-I think that's his name, seem like interesting characters with some heart-warming moments but don't get that much time to bond with the kids. The Barnabys are quirky but aren't that different from each other. The baby was obnoxious and didn't act like a baby at all. Instead of the typical talking baby to give her a personality, they make her a bundle of wacky looney tunes animation. I'm just not into that kind of style, it's way too outdated and silly and we have better technology to create more realistic animation. She also disappears mid-way into the film, it's like they didn't know exactly what to do with this character. The parents, while darkly funny, don't act like human beings. They don't bat an eye to whatever danger they're in and all they do is make love. And Tim is the worst anti-hero I've seen since Sequel!Flint Lockwood. And yes, you heard me, I said SEQUEL!FLINT LOCKWOOD! I'm pretending that whatever I watched that Kris Pearn also screwed with was not canon. He is supposed to be the most sensible and mature one but did something idiotic and immature toward the end which I will not spoil but it disregarded his whole character up to that point. He was so mean to the nanny and unlike his siblings, took way too long to warm up to her. I'm assuming that the character is like 13ish so I understand how he would be leery around her because of his life but kids are resilient and naive so I expected him to warm up to her pretty quickly like the rest of his siblings.
Jane is voiced beautifully by Alessia Cara and she has a touching song that carries the story. The cat provides some good commentary throughout the film while also being a part of the cast.
The storyline is character-driven so I already explained what it's like. Though, I do want to add that it's not much better. There are some cop-out scenes and I feel this film could've done with being a bit longer.
It's a fine film to put on for this boring quarantine or if you want to entertain the kids for a bit but there are better movies to watch like Home Alone, A Series of Unfortunate Events, or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.