This movie is based on a book by Lois Lowry. I haven't read the book, so I can't compare this movie to that. It's essentially about 4 children who grow up in a strange, old house in the middle of a city, and they apparently never leave the city. They have two parents who absolutely detest children to the point of gross abuse and neglect. They don't feed the kids, always yell at them, and the oldest is often tossed into the coal room. The story is supposed to be darkly comic along the lines of A Series of Unfortunate Events. One night, a orphaned baby is left on their doorstep, and the kids are all kicked out of the house until the rid themselves of the baby. They end up leaving it on the doorstep of a candy factory. This ultimately gives them the idea to make themselves orphans. They propose to do this by convincing their parents to take a wildly dangerous adventure vacation, literally hoping that the parents die at some point on it. The parents go on the adventure, but they don't want to leave the kids alone, so they hire what they believe is a cheap, terrible nanny. The nanny turns out to be kind and wonderful. The parents fail to die on their adventure before they run out of money. In order to keep adventuring, they decide to remotely sell their house. They tell the nanny to do whatever with the kids. This ultimately leads to a situation where the kids are declared orphans and taken into custody, where they are separated into different homes, though all of the homes seem to be very nice and loving. In order to be permanently reunited, they need their biological parents, so after they escape their homes, they build an airship and go rescue them in the Swiss Alps. The parents steal the airship and leave the kids to die, though they are ultimately rescued and live happily ever after.