[1] The voice cast includes Isla Fisher, Tim Minchin, Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, Miranda Tapsell, Angus Imrie, Keith Urban, and Jacki Weaver, and is distributed by Netflix Animation.

Maddie is supported by Jackie, a motherly saltwater crocodile, who tells her and her three best friends —Frank, a funnel-web spider, Zoe, a thorny devil, and Nigel, a marbled scorpion— about the Outback, a place recognizable with three mountains where creatures like them belong.

While crossing Sydney Harbour, they run into Jacinta, a great white shark, who is part of a mysterious organization called the Uglies Secret Society (USS) where animals considered "monsters" help each other upon hearing the password ("I'm ugly.

After getting help from Legs, a Redback Spider and her pack in getting around the sewers, Pretty Boy finds that he has been incorrectly reported dead and his popularity has been taken by a quokka named Giggles.

At a school in the outer suburbs, after Maddie frees two lovelorn cane toads named Doug and Doreen, the animals get a ride on an excursion bus that takes them to the Blue Mountains.

After the animals escape, Chaz reveals to Chazzie that his adventurous and Aussie wildlife expert history was all a lie and he only moved from Florida to Australia after being inspired by television shows featuring Australian zookeepers (such as Steve Irwin).

Maddie, who broke down crying over losing her friends, tries to get the animals of the land to help her rescue them, but they initially refuse due to the fact none of them had ever left before.

The rescue becomes a disaster when Pretty unmounts the truck to help Maddie, causing the ladder to spin uncontrollably just as Maddie accepts her friends as her adopted siblings, resulting in Zoe taking advantage of Nigel's fear of the color beige to make him emit a high-pitch scream to break the glass, which even Zoe believed was unbreakable due a sticker meant to discourage humans from breaking it.

Using one of the bikers’ bikes, Maddie and Pretty Boy reunite with their friends and are chased into a canyon, where the Outback inhabitants, having changed their minds about not helping Maddie, and even the other koalas, including Skylar, arrive to help, but everyone is caught in a trap sprung by Clive as a way to get revenge on Chaz for the loss of his deceased brother Duncan, who, prior to the events of the film, tried to escape but ended up getting eaten by a seagull.

[3] In an interview with TheWrap, Cripps said that Larrikins had "focused on the cute animals, and so I didn't want to go back down that same road, I went to the dark side.

"[4] Clare Knight, whose previous animated film experience includes her work as Lead Editor of the Kung Fu Panda franchise, said "A lot of executives would say to us, 'A snake?

[12] In the week following its worldwide release, the film reached Top 10 Lists on Netflix in 64 countries, including Australia and the United States.

[15] Brad Newsome of The Sydney Morning Herald said that the "Gorgeous character design and some delightful voice performances elevate this uneven CGI romp in which a bunch of “ugly” Australian animals break out of a zoo and head for the outback.

"[16] Natalia Winkelman of The New York Times was also positive, writing: "However generic this movie is in premise, there is wit to be found in its details, and warmth in its message.