The traditional family of dad, mom, and somewhere in the ballpark of two children is a wonderful blessing, if that is the life to which you are called. There are those who pine for that situation and are not able to reach it. Others choose something else, and Catholicism has Christian alternatives to those roles found in religious life. Still, there are some in society who believe that those who do not fit that mold are somehow less than, or arguably worse, to be pitied. These are themes that can all be found in today’s film, The Willoughbys (2020). Because I am not the biggest fan of animated movies, a lot of the antics found therein were lost on me. Nonetheless, it does contain a pretty good message that suggests that, like the Church, family can come in many ways as long as there is love.

A blue Cat (voiced by Ricky Gervais), who serves as narrator, introduces The Willoughbys as a once-great family whose impressive ancestors have produced generations of distinguished people with magnificent red mustaches. The current Mr. (voiced by Martin Short) and Mrs. Willoughby (voiced by Jane Krakowski), however, care almost exclusively about each other and treat their four children as unwanted intrusions. Tim (voiced by Will Forte), the eldest, longs to restore the family’s former greatness. His sister Jane (voiced by Alessia Cara) loves to sing, despite her parents forbidding music, while the youngest children are identical twins both named Barnaby (voiced by Seán Cullen), because their parents apparently could not be bothered to think of another name. One day, Jane discovers an abandoned baby outside the house and brings her inside. The parents are furious and throw all four children out until they dispose of the infant. Following a rainbow, the siblings arrive at the enormous candy factory of Commander Melanoff (voiced by Terry Crews), where they leave the baby, whom they name Ruth. On the way home, the children decide that their lives would improve if they became orphans. They create a fake travel brochure advertising a romantic vacation filled with absurdly dangerous destinations, hoping their parents will perish along the way. Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby eagerly depart, but they have hired a nanny to watch the children. Linda (voiced by Maya Rudolph) arrives and immediately disrupts Tim’s plans to run the household himself. Jane and the Barnabys quickly love her, while Tim remains suspicious. When Linda learns about Ruth, she takes the children back to the candy factory. There they discover that the lonely Commander Melanoff has become attached to the baby and wants to raise her. Linda helps him understand what caring for Ruth will require and concludes that the baby has found a loving home. Meanwhile, the Willoughby parents miraculously survive every deadly stop on their vacation. When they run out of money, they refuse to return to their children and instead decide to sell the family home to finance more traveling. They leave Linda a message telling her to handle the children herself. Tim overhears enough to become convinced that Linda is secretly working against them and reports her to Orphan Services. Before the authorities arrive, the children attempt to frighten away prospective home buyers. Linda joins them in scaring off the final family, finally convincing Tim that she genuinely cares about them. Unfortunately, his earlier phone call cannot be undone. Orphan Services arrives, and Linda is revealed to have grown up as an orphan herself without ever finding a permanent family. Hurt by Tim’s betrayal, she leaves, while the four Willoughby children are separated and sent to different foster homes. Tim repeatedly runs away, eventually returning to the family property only to watch the Willoughby house being demolished. After his continued escapes, Orphan Services confines him at its headquarters. The Cat, finally deciding that narration is not enough, brings Tim’s helmet to Linda. She realizes that Tim needs her and breaks him out before helping reunite all four siblings. Tim apologizes, but the children face a practical problem. As long as their parents remain missing, Orphan Services can continue pursuing them. They therefore decide to rescue the very people they originally tried to eliminate. With help from Linda, Commander Melanoff, and Ruth, the children construct a candy-powered dirigible and learn that their parents are attempting to climb the supposedly Unclimbable Alps in Switzerland. The siblings take the dirigible themselves and follow a trail of their mother’s yarn up the mountain, where they find Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby nearly frozen to death. Despite everything their parents have done, the children save them. They even confess that they deliberately sent them on the dangerous vacation and offer the possibility of becoming a real family. Their parents remain completely unchanged. Rather than reconcile, they steal the dirigible and abandon their children on the mountain. Their selfishness proves self-defeating when they lose control of the aircraft and crash into the sea. Stranded in the cold, Tim, Jane, and the Barnabys begin to freeze. Jane sings to comfort her brothers, and her song guides Linda, Commander Melanoff, and Ruth, who have followed them, to their location. The children are rescued and finally receive the family they have needed all along. Linda and Commander Melanoff adopt the Willoughby siblings and raise them alongside Ruth at the candy factory, where affection, music, food, and general happiness are no longer forbidden. Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby, meanwhile, survive their crash only to encounter a shark at sea.

Thus, The Willoughbys ends not by restoring the family with which its children began, but by creating one around the people who actually choose to love them. Blood makes the original Willoughbys relatives. Love, sacrifice, forgiveness, and a rather enormous quantity of candy finally give the children a family. Those last few traits, aside from the candy, are what make a group of people into a family regardless of blood. It is the kind of thing we find throughout the New Testament. Jesus teaches that those who do the will of His Father belong to a family that transcends blood, while St. Paul explicitly describes Christians as adopted sons and daughters of God. This understanding permeates the Catholic Church and has done so from the start. In the Book of Acts, if you read about how early Christians lived, prayed, and shared their lives together, it sounds a lot like a family. As the Church grew and religious communities began to be established, the men and women who lived in them called one another brothers and sisters. Finally, we refer to our priests as “Father.” Unlike the Willoughby siblings, these people are not necessarily related by blood, though there have certainly been examples of actual brothers and sisters entering religious life. What unites the Church as a family is deeper than biology. Through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, Christians become members of one Body and children of the same Father. If you allow the Holy Spirit into your life, anything is possible, or as Jane would put it, “What if. . . ?” Her hypotheticals are usually the workings of an overactive imagination, but the last one in the film functions almost like a prayer. Not long after she utters it, Linda and Commander Melanoff appear and rescue the children from freezing to death on the mountain. The next scene sees them become an official family, one that is not the result of birth but is based on genuine care for the welfare of one another. The movie is not consciously making a theological claim about the Holy Spirit, but for a Catholic viewer, their new family can serve as a nice analogy for the spiritual family God creates through grace.

It usually takes the power of the Holy Spirit to get me through a film like The Willoughbys, though I should probably not say such things because it borders on blasphemy. Still, the movie is not aimed at me, and that is okay. I can find nothing else about it to criticize.