Spider-verse meets Gravity falls, resulting in a completely unexpected delight that really is fun for the whole family. The animation is beautiful, the pace is fast, the humor earnest and often physical, and the story intentionally misses every opportunity for cynicism. The photogenic family next door with the perfect vacation photos really is that high-functioning, fit and smart.1 Friends are there to support you, not tease you. The world doesn’t make fun of weirdness, it embraces it.
So, even though it premiered on Netflix, this is not your ordinary Netflix feature-length animation; it is actually good. It is also a triumph of believable character motivation and well-executed action sequences over a coherent plot. Thankfully, humans put much more weight on the former.
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Some Eastern European cynicism is in order, though: given that these characters are voiced by John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, making them inauthentic frauds was never an option. ↩