Back To The Outback Trailer: Netflix's New Animated Movie Is A Great Zoo Escape

A new family movie with cute animals and ... urine-drinking jokes is coming to Netflix. Animated adventure-comedy "Back to the Outback" is co-directed by Clare Knight (the "Kung Fu Panda" movies) and Harry Cripps ("The Dry"), with Cripps also penning the screenplay from a story by himself and Gregory Lessans. And it seems like a movie that attends the same Kung Fu Panda school of wisecracking animals who can kill you with a touch, but are also cute and cuddly. Watch the "Back to the Outback" trailer below.

I'm going to be honest, the entire continent of Australia frightens me because it seems like every creature living there is divinely engineered to kill humans. Spiders the size of catcher's mitts, assassin bees, snakes whose venom turns your blood to the consistency of Oobleck. But it seems I'm part of the problem: these little guys just want to fit in without being gawked at and judged as potential murder creatures. Maddie the snake, Zoe the Thorny Devil, hairy spider Frank, and Nigel the scorpion look cuddly enough, and their obnoxious tagalong Pretty Boy the koala, too. Eric Bana's turn as antagonist zookeeper Chaz looks fun, chasing the creatures across Australia with his partner Ben.

The accidental urine-drinking in the trailer might raise a few parents' eyebrows but oddly enough, is not the first time someone has inadvertently drank urine in a children's film. In 2016's "Angry Birds," screenwriter John Vitti (who also slid a poop-eating gag into "Alvin and The Chipmunks") classed up the script by having characters drink from a lake, only to later discover that another bird uses the body of water as his personal toilet. Back in my day, it was just fart jokes.

The voice talent in "Back to the Outback" includes Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, Isla Fisher, Tim Minchin, Jacki Weaver, Wayne Knight, Miranda Tapsell, Angus Imrie, and Keith Urban. The film is produced by Reel FX Animation Studios, Weed Road Pictures along with Netflix Animation. Daniela Mazzucato produces, with Melissa Cobb, Akiva Goldsman and Greg Lessans executive producing. The tagline warns that the creatures are "Dangerously cute and on the loose."

Here's the synopsis for "Back to the Outback":

Tired of being locked in a reptile house where humans gawk at them like they're monsters, a group of Australia's deadliest creatures plot a daring escape from their zoo to the Outback.

"Back to the Outback" arrives on Netflix on December 10, 2021.