I'm back again with another review, after The Fanatic scared me away from theaters for what felt like months. This time, courtousy of T-Mobile Tuesday's $4 movie ticket, via Atom. Probably the only reason I bothered to catch this one, to be perfectly honest. As there were only two other people at my screening, I decided to take notes.... By God, what have I become? After scouring them over for a good 30 seconds, I've come to the conclusion that the best way to write a review for The Addams Family is probably the most appropriate:
The Good:
Honestly, the story isn't terrible. Because it's a kids movie, they feel the need to include a moral at the end that anyone who's watched a movie ever could see coming from 500 miles away, but there were nice nuggets introduced early in the film that worked their way into the ending seemlessly, which is always a nice story-telling aspect.
The shining star of the film is the lore of the Addams Family and the way its doled out throughout the film. While the plot is razor-thin, at the very least we get some wonderful segments of the house and are briefly introduced to a fun cast of characters and traditions I would have been very happy to see more of.
Unsurprisingly from every iteration of the story ever, Lurch, Thing and Wednesday steal the show. Thing has a smart watch that gives him an eye in this!
The Bad:
While the story itself isn't bad, the writing is terrible. Stay with me here, what I mean is that this film is, as I mentioned, razor-thin. What plot there is is dealt with without any real resistance. Sure there's a climactic battle to end the film, but you are never for a moment concerned because it hardly feels important. Nothing in the movie does. The story is a vehicle to throw a bunch of morbid jokes at us. And if this was the first time the Addams Family had ever been done, they'd probably still be funny. But it's not. Uncle Fester, at one point, is just walking around with a light bulb in his mouth. We don't see him put it there, they really just assume that everyone in the audience is already intimately familiar with what's happening here, which begs the question: who was this film actually intended for? Everything got an origin story (including the Theme song, which appears in the movie, I believe, four times), but they're rushed in such a way that they just seem to trust you didn't need them to begin with. The movie is childish to the point you would think it couldn't be aimed at adults, so I don't really know if even the writers knew who they were writing for.
The supporting cast of the film is basically non-existent. There's a list of actors and actresses that are allegedly in this movie, but I couldn't tell you where for 1 million bucks... Ok, maybe I could at least guess. It all feels like the film was rushed, or that a lot was cut out. But I lean towards the former because...
The Ugly
This movie is hideous. There are parts where I literally wrote down, "is this an actually finished render?" The Emoji Movie had more complete backgrounds in parts. This city doesn't feel lived in, it's the size of a neighborhood in a video game and the scales are way way off as well, but maybe that's an aesthetic choice. I'd forgive the plastic look of the main city, since it was supposed to come across as too perfect, but the Addams house frequently had the same problems. There's a joke about the Holy Hand Grenade at one point, and instead of bothering to animate it in as a throwaway Easter egg, you're just left with this generic pile of bombs that look like a Intro to Animation cut and paste job instead. There's just not a lot of life in the background.
Nick Kroll is unforgivably terrible, and I usually like his voice acting. Every time Uncle Fester spoke, I wanted to jab out my eardrums.
The music cues were mostly ok outside of two moments: Drop It Like It's Hot when Cousin It arrives (if you saw the trailer, you saw the entirity of what Cousin had to offer to this story), not only was it too on the nose, it legitimately contained a bleep in the song. Very bizarre choice. Then, after the Addams Family theme closes the movie (as I said, I believe that's the fourth time it's played) a Migos track smash cuts into the film so audaciously my jaw actually dropped. And that was the last impression I was left with. I was waffling at a 5/10, but, no no, you convinced me. A 4 it is! One point for each time you made me listen to that song.
4/10
P. S. Some other notes I didn't have space for: A joke about New Jersey! How original. Two Guillotine jokes within two minutes. How the heck was that Snoop Dogg? This film starts with a genocide... Nice. Oh no, it's trying to be politically insightful! Great... A viagra joke.
