Saturday, October 26, 2019

(2019) The Addams Family - A Pretty Standard Remake of the Quite Famous 1990s Weird Family

I was kind of looking forward to see this movie as I saw the trailer and it looked fun. I was quite familiar with the family in this film and my wife was also quite a fan. Unfortunately though, when it premiered on Friday, it did not play in the theater near our home and the nearest one only played until 4PM. So we could only see this movie today at a cinema quite far. Anyway, let us get on with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

The really weird and rather monstrous Addams family that consisted of the father Gomez (Oscar Isaac - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ex Machina etc) his wife Morticia (Charlize Theron - Long ShotThe Huntsman: Winter War etc) and their children the adolescent Wednesday (ChloĆ« Grace Moretz - If I Stay Hugo etc) and her younger brother Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard - ItStranger Things TV series etc) were living peacefully in a dark horrifying mansion with Lurch the butler (Conrad Vernon - Shrek etc).


That was until their surroundings were built into a new complex for community developed by reality TV host Margaux (Allison Janney - The West Wing TV series etc). Things became complicated when Margaux felt Addams' house was not suitable for the environment and her own daughter Parker (Elsie Fisher - Eighth Grade etc) befriended with Wednesday. So Margaux tried her best to ensure the complex would still be attractive for people.

So how would the story conclude for the Addams family? Find them all in this comedy movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As I said above, I was expecting this would be a movie where my wife and I could enjoy with tons of laughter from beginning till end. However, when we saw this film, it did provide us funny moments but it was not as full of them as we would have hoped for. We did have few chuckles but somehow that was it. There were no hilarious scenes at all.

I honestly could not remember if I did see the live version movies back in the 1990s but I did watch the series long time ago. All I could remember from that comedy series were the funny main characters and that Frankenstein-like butler. My wife did remember there was that hand called Thing. So one thing we liked when we saw this movie was the memory it brought when we were shown those weird characters. It was quite fun seeing them introduced to us again.

In term of story itself, it was pretty average and quite light. It had one main issue the movie maker tried to focus on. Funnily enough I somehow felt that I was watching an extended episode of a TV series rather than a movie. There seemed to be a heavy drama about Wednesday but it was resolved pretty easily making it less memorable. I actually felt the story about Pugsley was a bit more interesting but it was also resolved too conveniently.

Aside from the too light story arc, the voice cast were actually pretty good. I love their characterization which I thought really suit their roles, especially ChloĆ« Grace Moretz who I thought was perfect as the Gothic and dark Wednesday. There were also a lot of talented and quite well known names who filled some of the characters such as Nick Kroll (The Secret Life of Pets 2 etc) as uncle Fester or Bette Midler (The First Wives Club, Gypsy etc) as Grandmama.

The animations were greatly done and lots of them would seem wonderful if seen in 3D. There were also one or two nice songs played in here, with the best one personally for me was Everybody Hurts. There were also a song by Christina Aguilera during the closing credits, which did not have any mid or end credit scenes.

Overall I thought this one was a pretty standard animated movie. It was quite fun but not an impressive or a memorable one. It did not have too much conflict or deep story like those from Pixar or Disney or from other studios. This movie was from MGM which I think hold the Intellectual Property of the Addams Family. If you are fans of the original movie or the series, you might be able to enjoy this or at least it could bring some nostalgic feeling. But those who are not familiar might feel this one is too weird. I think Transylvannia movies might be more appealing for general audiences. So give this a try if you want to see a quite fun kid friendly animated movie about a really weird family as long as you could tolerate their weirdness. But if you prefer a deep and meaningful movie, then you might be disappointed. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Notes:
The Addams family were based on comics created by Charles Addams back in 1938. It has been made into several movies (mostly in the 90s) and animated series as well. 

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