The Addams Family

The new animated take on The Addams Family marks the first time in their long history that the creations of cartoonist Charles Addams failed to make me truly laugh.  I smiled a few times, and I even chuckled a little once at a scene built around the song "Everybody Hurts".  But, I never got the big laughs that I was expecting.

This disheartened me, being a lifetime fan of the characters in their various incarnations from the original TV series, to the live action feature films from the 90s, and even the Broadway musical.  I was actually highly anticipating this film, as the trailers seemed to promise an artstyle that was fairly faithful to the original comic drawings.  And then you have an amazing voice cast, which includes such talents as Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Kroll, Bette Midler, Allison Janney, and Elsie Fisher (the breakout star of Eighth Grade).  And to be fair, the cast is not at fault here.  They are doing the best they can with the material.  That sentence right there signals the problem.  The script is not up to the talent that it somehow managed to attract, nor is it up to the challenge of truly capturing the macabre Addams world.  The movie is safe, kind of bland, and forces its message down the throat of the audience of respecting people for their differences. 

And yet, the movie does hold promise early on in its opening prologue, which shows Gomez (voice by Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) getting married, until their big day is interrupted by angry locals carrying pitchforks and torches, aiming to drive the newlyweds out of their town.  They decide to head for a place "where no one in their right mind would be caught dead in" (New Jersey), and make their home in an abandoned and haunted asylum for the criminally insane.  The one inmate who was apparently left behind when the asylum closed becomes their butler Lurch (Conrad Vernon), and they make the place their new home.  Flash forward 13 years later, and the family has expanded to include two children, Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard).  It is the kids who kick off the plot proper, as Wednesday longs to see the world outside of the Addams Family home that she's lived in her whole life, while Pugsley is about to participate in a coming of age ceremony, and is worried that he will let everyone down when the time comes for him to perform a ritualistic dance.

There is actually quite a lot of plot here for a movie that runs just under 90 minutes.  The main plot centers on the villain, Margaux Needler (Allison Janney), a deceptively sunny woman who hosts a home makeover show, and is trying to build a "perfect" community where all the homes and people look and act the same.  When she discovers the Addams mansion on a hilltop overlooking their town, she makes it her mission to either remake the home how she desires, or to get the Addams to move out.  There is also a plot concerning the Addams having their first family reunion since the wedding 13 years ago, which brings Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll), Grandmama Addams (Bette Midler) and Cousin It (Snoop Dogg...Yes, Snoop Dogg...) into the mix.  We also get little Wednesday attending public school for the first time, making friends with Margaux's outcast daughter (Elsie Fisher), and taking on some mean girls. 

In all honesty, I can see this stuff working, but that would require a screenplay with some actual wit and sharp bite.  The script credited to Matt Lieberman and Pamela Pettler relies too much on groan-worthy puns for its laughs, and never quite explores the idea of the Addams mixing with the outside world like it should.  It also lacks the morbid humor of the 1991 Addams Family film, and especially its 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values.  I guess this is to be expected, but did they have to water down these characters and the humor as much as they've done here?  I kept on waiting for the movie to develop a devilish sense of humor, and instead I got even more subplots built around Morticia moping about how Wednesday is more interested in her new friend at school than in her.  And when the movie does try to wrap up all of its plot threads in a hurried and ineffective climax, it comes across as preachy, repeating its lesson over and over, as if the movie thinks the audience didn't get it the first time.

The Addams Family is certainly not unwatchable, but knowing these characters and the past successful adaptations to bring them to the screen, this is the first time I can say I've been truly disappointed in them.  It's always sad when a movie fails to live up to your expectations.  But making the Addams this uninteresting and safe seems borderline criminal.

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