The Addams Family
Well, this was annoying.
This animated retelling of Charles Addams’ beloved satirical creation is beyond pale. This is diet Addams Family. Addams beta. The unfinished EA videogame that you need to download two thirds of to complete. A mad sprint where one runs into every single hurdle. I’ve seen animated films of this nature full of references, but The Addams Family of 2019 has way too many. Within one scene where Wednesday Addams ressurects science class frogs (gee, how unique), we get Frankenstein and Invasion of the Body Snatchers callbacks within microseconds. A reference is meant to take you back, not just be glossed over. What’s the point in a reference, then? At this point, it represents a lack of substance within a story, and that’s exactly what The Addams Family is.
The Addams parents are gracious hosts to a complete mess of a film.
The animation style is actually decent. The Addams themselves look great in animated form, as does their famous haunted house. Yet, the commoners look peculiar themselves, like caricatures. Shouldn’t there have been a bigger distancing between the two types of characters? Well, the famous ghastly family is further established by some solid voice acting, especially by Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac, and Chloë Grace Moretz (Finn Wolfhard does a decent job as well). However, none of these performances can save the plenty of irritating moments in the film. Stale, old jokes. A lack of downtime. Constant noise. Most of all, those awful references. Again, these references don’t even joke about their source materials or anything, so I can’t even justify this film as a commentary. This is just lazy. Purely lazy. The film attempts to revive the story by adding some sort of nuance with twenty minutes remaining, but who cares at this point? The film was clearly geared to be a cash cow, and we could tell just by the promotion of the film. It’s too bad we weren’t proven wrong.
Studios need to learn that they can make money off of old ideas by introducing these icons to a new audience, but they are doing these original concepts a titanic disservice, and thus killing any staying power that could have been instilled by recreating these stories. The Addams Family does nothing to make the family relevant today (no link to the world today, outside of jokes and technology), or prove that there was any reason to make this film in the first place. I must apologize to The Addams Family as an entity. This is your worst entry of any sort, and that isn’t a compliment.
I think my final straw was the severed head quartet that sang “I Like It” by Cardi B. That gag alone says it all. When Cousin It drives in to “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, the camel’s back was beyond broken. The camel was dead, decomposing, and on the verge of reincarnation. I don’t care if Snoop Dogg himself voices Cousin It, we all know by now that not everything Snoop says yes to is worthwhile.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.