The new rendition of “The Addams Family” directed by Conrad Vernon came out last weekend. Photo from IMDB.
“The Addams Family” is the latest animated adaptation of the classic Charles Adams comic strip. Directed by Conrad Vernon, it follows the titular family finding their haunted home and dealing with a new town built by a TV home improvement star.
This film starts with a pretty entertaining opening sequence involving the wedding of Gomez and Morticia finding their home and quickly becomes a bland and generic animated film with a good message about acceptance.
The film’s set up is very reminiscent of the original TV shows, and it felt like the film could be truly entertaining throughout. The film’s main problem involve its villainous real estate mogul, Margaux Needler, voiced by Alison Jahney, whose plot of turning the town against the Addams family is very lazy and uninteresting when compared to the simple interactions between the Addams family. The characters of Thing, Lurch, Wednesday, Pugsley, Morticia, Gomez and Uncle Fester are all very well introduced but there isn’t a lot for any of the characters to do.
The other storylines involving Pugsley, voiced by Finn Wolfhard, performing an Addams Family ritual known as the Mazurka, or Wednesday, voiced by Chloe Grace Moertz, attending middle school and trying to shock her mother Morticia, voiced by Charlize Theron, are far more interesting and entertaining than anything in the main plot.
All of the film’s voice acting is very good, with Oscar Issac and Theron stealing the show as Gomez and Morticia, respectively. The film simply meanders around for a lot of disjointed sub-plots for a while with lazy plot conveniences involving Margaux Needler turning her town against the Addams family to keep the film under 90 minutes.
Additionally, the film has some pretty clever humor that brought out a few chuckles in an otherwise uninteresting flick. Some of the films background humor including the family letting their pet lion out in the town without a leash is far more funny than any of the corny puns in the script. Even the film’s animation feels pretty bland and almost dated with only a couple decent character designs to salvage its overly bright outdoor locations.
Furthermore, “The Addams Family” simply lacks the slightly dark nature of the previous TV shows and movies without replacing it with anything truly interesting. The animation is too clear and crisp to be scary and the film lacks any great jokes to get anything besides a chuckle every once and awhile.
By its ending, “The Addams Family” felt as if it was rushing towards an overall resolution as the townspeople attempt to destroy their home under Margaux’s deception. All of the sub-plots involving Pugsley and Wednesday just stop in order to get an overblown yet fun action sequence that felt unnecessary to the overall story. Everything wraps up too quickly and the film feels pretty pointless besides for giving a message about inclusion and acceptance.
Overall, “The Addams Family” is a pretty disappointing animated adaptation of the classic property with only a few clever jokes, good character designs and an intriguing opening that do not make up for its rather bland animation style and uninteresting plot that really rushes itself into a dull conclusion. For me, “The Addams Family” gets a four out of 10.