Happy Halloween, readers!
A few days ago, for my first Halloween-based “Ruminations” post, I put out an argument for why I felt it important to introduce children to macabre, vaguely horror-based themes to them via mass media, specifically movies. To that end, I was as excited as most were when MGM’s animated feature-length film iteration of the iconic “Addam’s Family” was announced. After all, the famously macabre stars of TV and comics have a long and proud history of dark horror comedy and a quirky, off-kilter sense of humor revolving around masochism and a love for all things considered bleak and horrifying, and a an animated theatrical film that uses a style pulled straight from the original comic strips seems like a perfect candidate to qualify as the next “Coraline”- a surreal, sometimes creepy, yet charmingly amusing comedy horror to revitalize the franchise. After seeing the movie, I’m happy to announce that the film’s release qualifies as a good case in point of what I had previously discussed. Unfortunately, I’m unhappy to announce that such a designation was earned for less-than-stellar reasons. The foundation for something truly surreal and memorable was laid by both the animation and the relative faithfulness to the source material and its characters, and I was more than eager to see this movie and use it as a case study for why kids need a little creepiness with their wondrous adventures in film. Instead, however, the end product was a disappointment in many ways, torn between the tone of an established franchise and a slavish devotion to the narrative of completely different and safely conventional stories typical of contemporary animated films.
Immediately following their marriage on the outskirts of a quaint village, Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia Addams (Charlize Theron), along with their extended families, are chased out of the community by torch-wielding townsfolk for their off-putting creepiness and fascination with the macabre. Following this, they are able to find a much more safe and accommodating (albeit very dilapidated) home in the form of an abandoned asylum, making an effort to turn it into the spookiest and creepiest abode the Addams could wish for. Over the years, Gomez and Morticia makes themselves thoroughly at home with their children, the eerily morose daughter Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and the rambunctious son Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard), but the security they’ve found in their gothic mansion comes to a screeching halt when an emerging suburban community threatens to send them running again. Worse yet, the Addams children are facing their own turmoils, with Pugsley cracking under the pressure of an upcoming family tradition centered on a dance of swords and Wednesday longing to see other places and people outside her home. Will the Addams family pull through together and circumvent these bumps in their roads to happiness, or be run out of town and forced to live as a dysfunctional family of so-called “monsters”?
Before closing in on the disappointing factors of the “Addams Family’s” latest big-screen incarnation, I feel it’s imperative to bring up that there’s a lot about this film that I do legitimately like. For instance, the movie’s animation and art style are both fantastic, and both do wonders at remaining faithful to the original designs of the iconic characters while expertly imbuing life into the designs, especially during the action or slapstick scenes. The characters are wonderfully expressive, the Addams house is full of lushly detailed set-pieces and nods to the franchise’s roots, and the comedic timing is especially on point due to the flexible and fast animation at work during those aforementioned scenes. Even removing the animation, the characters themselves are, for the most part, incredibly faithful and wonderfully performed by the star-studded cast. It’s easy at first to roll your eyes at the over-reliance on celebrities in the cast, but it’s amazing how well they slip into their respective members of the family. Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron, for instance, are remarkably spot-on as Gomez and Morticia. The otherwise morbid couple are still just as madly in love with each other as in previous incarnations, and I was especially impressed by how expressive and unrecognizable Theron was as Morticia. Finn Wolfhard is serviceable in his rambunctiousness as Pugsley, and Nick Kroll is easily the funniest cast member as Uncle Fester, whose antics got plenty of chuckles out of me whenever he was on screen. My personal favorite out of this cast, however, was Chloë Grace Moretz as Wednesday, who lends plenty of deadpan humor and some surprising nuance to the character who arguably laid down a foundation for young “goth girl” characters to come. It’s clear that everyone involved in the production and acting ends of “The Addams Family” had some genuine love for the source material, and with that love demonstrated in the acting, animation, and humor, this film is an amusing, chuckle-worthy and loving tribute to the Addams Family…
For the first forty-five minutes.
Once those forty-five minutes are over, the film seems to remind itself and the audience that a feature-length “Addams Family” movie needs to have a plot and a message (regardless of the actual need for one), and proceeds to squander every bit of the potential it had to be the kind of film that could spook families without either pandering too or traumatizing their younger members. That previously discussed plot of the traditional suburban community striving for conformity and aiming to drive out the Addams “weirdos” eventually starts to have a cancerous effect on the film’s overall memorability and appeal, and this is only exacerbated by the circumstances of its incorporation. The problem with every modern iteration of “The Addams Family” has always been that the characters are not exactly ideal to place in the middle of a traditional three-act structure, and are more suited to a comparatively episodic film narrative about dark humor and horror-based gags. That’s not to say that a more sentimental or personal “Addams Family” story couldn’t work, but such a narrative needs time and pathos to truly work in a story about these characters. What we have here is a perfect demonstration of how not to bring drama into a story, as the second half of the movie spends way too much time on Wednesday’s friendship with an uninteresting school girl and the scheming of the villainous TV host, who has all the charm and personality of a wet cat. This villain is just annoying, and her only function is to be a catalyst for a half-hearted message about societal pressures and the acceptance of differences weirdness, and while this message isn’t necessarily a bad thing, its execution falls flat on its face due to a simple, painful truth- this movie isn’t nearly creepy, kooky, or spooky enough to effectively convey that message. In the middle of that second half, I got the impression that the filmmakers were nearly finished production of a grimly funny “Addams Family” free from the burden of a plot until executive mandate demanded that there be a plot or message by virtue of it being an animated family movie.
That reasoning, however, is not so much an extra layer added to the “Addams Family” lore as it is a demonstration of weak faith in its source material, because “The Addams Family” does not need this superfluous thematic addition. The characters aren’t just a generic creepy family, they’re icons, and the dark antics they bring to the table should have been considered material enough for a worthwhile movie. With more of the franchise’s iconic and surreal edge applied, this could have been up on a shelf with “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Coraline”, “Monster House” and “ParaNorman” as a great creepy family film for a general audience to both laugh and flinch at. Instead, the 2019 “Addams Family” seems like it’s afraid to fully commit to that direction or to its own source material.
All in all, “The Addams Family” isn’t outright bad, just fairly unimpressive. I’m just sad that so much potential was squandered when there was such clear enthusiasm evident in the movie’s characterization and animation. “Mediocre” just wasn’t a word I wanted to use for a movie about these charmingly creepy horror-comedy legends.
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