The Addams Family isn’t creepy or kooky

MGM

My childhood was filled with classic TV shows with a supernatural bent like I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Munsters and The Addams Family back when they were just TV shows. I guess that makes me a classic now as well. Right? Anywho, I have been a long-time fan of The Addams Family TV series and the two wonderful live-action movies from the early 1990s, so coming into the new animated film, I had some big expectations (I have not, however, seen the 1992 animated series.)

Many people unfamiliar with the show wrongly assume the Addamses are a family of actual monsters, like The Munsters. They are not, they are just an average family with their own peculiar tastes for the macabre. In the new movie, we first meet Gomez and Morticia as they are apparently doing a marriage vow renewal ceremony but are run out of town by the locals who don’t want these ‘monsters’ in their town anymore. Dejected once again, they end up in New Jersey after their car hits someone standing in the middle of the road. That someone is wearing a straight-jacket from an asylum, and a lightning flash reveals the asylum high upon a hill, the perfect new home for the couple and their newly adopted manservant from the asylum. The asylum, however, has been abandoned for many years — which begs the question just how long was that patient out there in a straight-jacket on his own? That question is never answered but he makes himself at home once they arrive.

Thirteen years later, the Addamses have two children, Wednesday and Pugsley, and are preparing for Pugsley’s transition to adulthood with a long-time family ceremony known as a mazurka which requires skill, dexterity and swordplay (in reality, a mazurka is a Polish dance in triple time), and the entire Addams clan will be arriving to witness the event. But the lovely fog around their hilltop home suddenly dissipates as TV home makeover expert Margaux Needler has built an entire town in what was a bog for TV ratings and real estate sales. But when the fog clears and she sees the unsightly mansion at the top of the hill ruining the view, she sets out to, at first, make the place over, and then destroy it once all the Addamses arrive in town, again riling up the townsfolk to rid themselves of these ‘monsters’. But who here are the real monsters?

That, of course, is a very deep question for an animated film aimed at children but the adults in the audience may pick up that message. We see in our every day lives how people can treat others who aren’t like them as monsters, not realizing that it is their own behavior that is quite monstrous. So that subtle message is here but it’s not hitting you over the head and the kids may not pick up on it, but perhaps they will see that in life we should treat everyone with some level of kindness. If that’s all that comes from the movie, then I can’t fault it too much.

What I can fault the movie for, though, is that it’s just not funny. The Addams Family TV show and movies have always had a skewed sense of humor often filled with double entendre and holding a mirror up to the viewer as the Addamses are portrayed as a perfectly average family and we are the odd ones. I didn’t really get a lot of that from the new movie. In fact, the script was so mundane and plodding, I found myself drifting off a bit midway through the film. The film instead wants to rely on visual gags instead of witty dialogue, some of them that pose more questions than offer laughs like … where did ALL of those spiders come from that Morticia released from under her form-fitting dress? Margaux and her TV crew barely batted an eye when that happened. On the TV show, people would have fled the Addams house in super fast motion. I was also perplexed when Lurch was playing the organ in the foyer but it sounded like a piano, and then later he was playing his signature harpsichord but it sounded like an organ. What the fudge?! The film’s biggest flaw is the Margaux character. As portrayed by Allison Janney, Margaux is a loud, shrill creature who just grated on my nerves. She was the very definition of a cartoon villain and lacked any subtlety with her voice almost always cranked up to 11. She should have been toned down and a bit more insidious to really be the monster she was supposed to be.

As for the rest of the voice cast, it was hit or miss. Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron were excellent as Gomez and Morticia. So good, in fact, that I had no idea who the voices belonged to until the opening credits revealed the names. Chloé Grace Moretz is also very good as the droll and deadpan Wednesday Addams, but Finn Wolfhard’s voice was just a bit too mature for my liking as the young Pugsley. Even more grating than Janney was Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester attempting to mimic the TV original, Jackie Coogan, but sounding more like Jeffrey Ross with a head cold. On the TV show, Grandma lived with the family but here she just seems to pop in and out a couple of times, completely wasting the talents of Bette Midler (one of the three really recognizable voices in the film, along with Janney and Tituss Burgess as Margaux’s assistant). I did love Jennifer Lewis as Great Aunt Sloom in her one brief scene, and I could not have told you that Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara also provided the voices of Grandpa and Grandma Frump if my life depended on it. And was there any reason besides getting a song out of him to make Snoop Dogg the voice of Cousin It (and why they changed the spelling from Itt to It is beyond me)? The voice is unintelligible and electronically manipulated so it really doesn’t matter who does the voice.

On the plus side, the movie is beautifully animated … but that is also a bit problematic when it comes to the interior of the Addams house. The house, as described in the classic theme song lyrics, is supposed to be ‘a museum’. It’s full of junk, or their treasures, and was shabby chic before that was even a thing. This house it too pristine. Even when Morticia asks Lurch to dust the house — which means applying dust to everything — it’s still too clean and shiny. The place really didn’t need a Margaux makeover. That aside, the characters were faithful to the Charles Addams original drawing with stunning detail — a close up of Morticia applying makeup shows remarkable skin texture and pores. I was confused though as to why Thing was given an electronic eye since the disembodied hand never seemed to need one in the past. And why, oh why, did Lurch look like Michael Shannon?! That was so distracting. That is the one character that did not resemble the original drawing (and I wasn’t the only person who thought it looked like Shannon).

Overall, I may have chuckled once or twice, and I did appreciate the beautiful animation and the brilliantly faithful recreation of the original TV series opening credits at the end of the movie. Fans of the show will get a kick out of that. But if you’re looking for that wry, macabre humor featured in the comics, the TV series and the movies … you’re better off sticking with them. The visuals may keep the kids’ attention for a while but adults may be straining to find anything of humor. I really wanted to like The Addams Family, but it was ultimately a disappointment.

The Addams Family has a run time of 1 hour 45 minutes and is rated PG for macabre and suggestive humor, and some action.