Has the Addams target audience changed? I mean, the whole point to this shtick is they’re a fam simultaneously so full of life and so full of death. That isn’t toddler material. However, The Addams Family is now in cartoon form and seen more odd than morbid – people scream because Uncle Fester showed up, not because of what Uncle Fester dug up.
Speaking of which, this whole cemetery plot to this film is propelled by a group of fanatically closed-minded individuals. Geez, kids, we’re not asking you to participate in hermaphroditic hijinks at a dive bar on Castro Street; this film has entire on-screen populations screaming about a set of goths wearing slightly off-putting Halloween costumes.
It used to be the Addams had an intimate relationship with death, which is admittedly off-putting for the uninitiated. So, the original TV show was meant for older children and adults, yes? Now? Sure, Death is a friend, but we’re more into Puggsly as a demolitions expert than Wednesday tryin’ to cap a foo’. The themes, the animation, and the audience all say “kids.”
Run out of town before the opening credits, the Addams clan goes to where “no one would be caught dead in” : New Jersey. That’s a pretty good joke, no? They quickly settle into the haunted remains of a remote hill-topped insane asylum, making a slave/servant of its last straight-jacketed denizen. That seems wrong, but I suppose there was some free will in this transaction. There among the perpetual fog, Morticia (voice of Charlize Theron) and Gomez (Oscar Isaac) make a family, awwww, adding children in the form of the perpetually funeral-dressed Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her stranger thing of a brother Puggsly (Finn Wolfhard). Speaking of stranger things, another Addams servant is a living disembodied hand that acts as the demi-butler – look, I dunno the exact title; I wasn’t taking notes during Downton Abbey.
As Puggsly trains for his “Mazurka,” which seems the Addams equivalent of a bar mitzvah, the dale below their mountain is suddenly infested with a reality TV show intent on fabricating a cookie cutter community entitled (appropriately enough), Assimilation. It’s only a matter of time before the chills from the hills clash with the squares in the square. Honestly, however, the clash is tame; the Addams get more shock value out of appearance than the fact that Morticia -below the waist- seems to be entirely comprised of spiders.
As with the films in the 1990s, the best character is Wednesday. This Chloë Moretz version doesn’t stack up to the awesome of Christina Ricci, but there are some nice additions to the child full of woe. For instance, this Wednesday wears pigtails braided in the shape of matching nooses. That’s fun. Also, instead of dissecting a frog in bio lab, Wednesday chooses to pull a Dr. Frankenstein. Yes, as an amphibian lover, I’m equally as alarmed about the re-animating of dead frog tissue as I am about the re-animating of dead human tissue, but I can put that aside to appreciate the moment.
Bottom line here is a bunch of oddballs having to fit in, which is the theme for every.single.Addams episode/cartoon/movie/etc. This seems a long way to go for a message of tolerance, and especially unnecessary if the Assimilation folks had just not been such jerks in the first place. So the film becomes reliant on demonstrating exactly how oddball the family is. Maybe in the era of post-war Assimilation, this material was golden, but right now it’s tame. Your kids may see this a starter kit for world tolerance, which is a wonderful message, yet I still can’t help thinking Wednesday Addams with her noose pigtails and funeral dress will get a pass long before LGBTQ; had the film pushed a little harder, I might have given it a pass, as is, meh.
♪They’re not so bad, you know-a
They dress in black to show ya
It’s all just paranoia
The Addams Family
Their house could use some repair
What you expect to see there
Is not a world of despair
It’s mediocrity♫
Rated PG, 87 Minutes
Director: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon
Writer: Matt Lieberman, Pamela Pettler
Genre: Death in the family
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Dark-sided Junior
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you didn’t like ‘em before, cartoons of ‘em probably aren’t gonna help
♪ Parody Inspired by “The Addams Family”
