Conceptually, the new Addams Family is a touch confused. Per the lengthy pre-credits introduction sequence, this latest take on Charles Addams' classic characters are a bunch who very much mind the fact that polite "normal" society views and persecutes them as freaks, and are ecstatic to discover a creepy old manor in perfect line with their sensibilities. Quite a lot of one major subplot involves Morticia and Gomez agonizing over keeping Wednesday safe from the outside world, and the climax turns on first a need for one family member to shield the rest from an angry mob, then on the whole clan learning the meaning of tolerance. I'd feel somewhat hesitant to decry this as a betrayal of the franchise's core appeal - this being how for as creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky the Addams' are otherwise, they're far better at maintaining the wholesome, healthy ideal of a nuclear family than the more conventionally regular people around them - except for the way the film frequently demonstrates an understanding of this same appeal. Depending on the scene, the Addams Family are wracked with the same inability to functionally communicate with and love one another as the rest of the world and fear discovery/destruction, or act exactly like their traditional selves, blithely unaware of how or why others would ever view them as different, exactly in tune with one another. It's definitely odd to go from Morticia failing to deal with Wednesday's emergent rebellious attitudes or Gomez pushing Pugsley to work a tradition the same way he did, to the family unit ticking like clockwork to unintentionally freak out a nosy neighbor.
Matters aren't helped by how the film's vision of normalcy is itself decidedly skewed. The villain, Margaux Needler, a designer home flipper, seems a pretty decent foil to the family in the mold of the villains they faced in the 90s films, with a few added doses of more obvious "conformity is bad" commentary slathered on so the younger kids can get it without trying. Issue is, the same impulses that make her so obvious a foil on the surface also drive the writers to make her a far more conventional, active villain, which leads to... weird choices. Choices like the same film that's trying to make general social intolerance to difference scary deciding to have its villain artificially engineer any and all hate towards the Addams' via social media. Choices like bringing the intolerant villain round to the heroes' side without any idea how to do this, so she just goes from full-scale meltdown over her failure to blissful acceptance after some off-screen romancing from Uncle Fester. Normal as a concept basically has to adopt two contrary versions of itself, the default state of the world by natural order and something forced on others by control-freaks, in much the same way the family's dynamic flip-flops from its classic form to more conventional dysfunction and back again. It all reeks of a production with multiple differing visions, and no real compromise on how to make it a cohesive whole.
On the somewhat positive side, the individual characters as realized by their voice actors slot into their roles quite nicely. Pugsley in particular feels like a big improvement over other incarnations of the character, having an actual personality and arc to play through compared to his usual state of Wednesday's chew toy. He's still a little heavily reliant on the "little tyrant boy obsessed with explosives" archetype common to pretty much all forms of kooky family media, Finn Wolfward's performance occasionally trends towards generic in ways the other cast members don't, and I'm still not entirely convinced the idea of Gomez feeling ashamed over his son's interest in explosives over swords isn't against the franchise's general spirit... but it leads to some sweet moments in the finale, allows Pugsley a chance to shine, and gives the family's most cipher-like character some good definition, so I take the good I see here over the bad. Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron don't bring much to their characters Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston didn't already put there, though they feel right for the parts, and Chloë Grace Moretz has the right sort of deadpan to make her more rebellious take on Wednesday play well. Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester... look, he's in basically the right vocal neighborhood registry of a Jackie Coogan imitation, but there's something about how gargly he sounds at times and the implications of the character as a class-A pervert that turns me off the performance.
As per always, Lurch and Thing remain my personal favorites. Perhaps my love for characters with minimal dialogue and no major part to play in the plot says something about the film's quality. I'm still out here loving Lurch living his best life, even as he's mostly here to provide musical gags. I adore him all the same.
I wasn't expecting much out of this film, and sure enough I didn't get too much. Between its inconsistent characterization for the family, weird insistence that the Addams' of all families need to learn tolerance and acceptance of difference, and somewhat slow pace (it feels like we spend an hour setting up all the conflicts going down throughout the film, then toss out half and rush through what remains - there's a few teased-out lines regarding Morticia getting in over her head that never go anywhere, for example), it's definitely a prime candidate for a studio product existing for the sake of its own existence above any driven need to tell a story. Knowing as I do, however, how the Addams Family can be far duller and far more inappropriately disturbing (yes, even for them) as per the wretched 1977 Halloween special, I can't really say this is TOO bad. Confused, low-energy, and not so classically Addams as to properly earn the admittedly fun replication of the 60s series' intro before the credits, yes, but not awful. Not intolerable, or ruinous, or a blight on the cinematic landscape, or whatever some more hyperbolic reviewers are claiming. Definitely a good time for the kids, though probably destined to become less a beloved nostalgic classic than "the HELL was I thinking liking this so much?" when they grow up. It exists, won't make much money, and will pass from memory before you know it - why should I do much more to it than point out what I think is wrong, note what it gets right, and go, "Eh, y'know, if it's your thing, why not?"
(They slot a Young Frankenstein reference AND an Invasion of the Body Snatchers reference right next to each other. It's weird.)
2.5/5
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