Now, MGM has a long history of producing animation, being
the studio behind the original Tom and Jerry shorts, among others but their
production of late is fairly slim pickings. They’re certainly not on the same
level as something like Disney or even Illumination. CG is certainly a
relatively new field for them, and they were only given a $23m budget for it.
Still, the film was commercially successful, earning back $203m, but it divided
critics with only a 44% Rotten Tomatoes rating
So, how does this animated Addams family show up? Let’s take a look.
We get a little origin story to start us off, Gomez and
Morticia saying their wedding vows before the entire family is chased off by an
angry mob. They run into an escaped mental patient Lurch who becomes their
butler because of course he does and the find a condemned, seemingly haunted
building which becomes their new home.
It’s a few years later, the family has grown with children
Pugsley and Wednesday, they’ve lived a sheltered life but growing up comes with
its own challenges. Wednesday’s curiosity is piqued by the idea of life outside
of the house and Pugsley has to prepare for his Sabre Mazurka, which in this
will basically be an allegory for a Bar-Mitzvah as opposed to a dance. And as
not all threats are internal, an interior designer named Margaux Needler sees
their house as a threat to her property development/renovation show and vows to
get rid of it, whatever it takes.
OK, if there’s a running theme in the Addams family that’s
ratcheted up to 11 in this story it’s prejudice. It’s not a theme unknown to
this franchise, we’ve seen it with antagonists in the previous film to an
extent and it does make a lot of sense since Addams family are, by definition a
family that doesn’t fit in the typical family mould.
But in an interesting twist on that angle, prejudice is not
just an external conflict to the Addams family, it’s an internal one too. The
focus in this film is a lot more on the children than the adults and there’s an
angle of the Addams’ family being just as judgemental about things like bright
pink hair clips as the townsfolk are of things like their pet lion, yeah, they
have a pet lion in this, ok.
Pugsley’s plotline is basically this conflict in a nutshell.
Pugsley is going to be judged on his swordplay but he’s not good at it, his
specialty, in this film anyway, is demolition and explosives. Taking full
advantage of the medium of animation, this film uses a lot of slapstick in
addition to its usual brand of comedy, not that slapstick was off the table for
other films, but stuff like Wednesday firing a crossbow and it hitting Fester
would not have looked good in live action.
The Addams Family themselves look pretty decent, though if
your only experiences with the family are through the live action adaptations,
some of the designs may take getting used to, they’re based on the original
comic designs. What aren’t are the designs of the regular folks and… Here’s
where the budget probably came back to bite them. The human designs are very
stylised which in another film might’ve even worked but the problem the
contrast between the humans and the Addams is lessened, which is kinda a
problem when most of the film revolves around the prejudices.
That and level to which the prejudice is ratcheted up makes
it more comical than poignant. The village mob of the mid-late 2010s have a
f*cking trebuchet just lying about. It was difficult to believe in the
flashback but in the semi-present day? These are the same people that needed a
flaming torch app instead of flaming torches.
Here’s another example, with the Wednesday story. Incoming
paraphrased quote
“My mother reacted well, she was accepting of my pink hair
clip, I hate that”
“I’m running away because this family doesn’t accept things that are different”
And to really cap this I need to go through the ending, so
major spoiler alert
So Margaux has cameras on everyone in the town for no other
reason than facilitating this bs ending. Basically, her plan had been to use
social media to rile up the townsfolk so they’d march on the Addams, it works
as the arrival of the other Addams for Pugsley’s Mazurka further riles them up.
But everything unravels as the house is near demolished, saved only by Wednesday
(and Pugsley too, I guess) and more-so the sentient tree Ichabod.
They see that the Addams are just a family and lay down
their arms, save for Margaux who is exposed for being a creepy stalker on a
livestream. The secrets that the townsfolk hold are… well, if it works for you
I guess. So, everyone’s weird in their own way and even Margaux gets a
semi-happy ending as Fester ends up buying all the houses in the town to house
the family and he and Margaux live together now… huh?
So, yeah this is really saccharine and makes it feel like
resolving prejudice is just that easy. And I’m sorry but no, it isn’t that
easy. Prejudice is a problem that’s lasted for generations and likely will
never fully go away, sure the nature of said prejudice may change, but we, by
our very nature judge others based on what we see first. This does not make us
bad people; it rather depends on how and in some cases whether we act on it.
This ending is insulting and we haven’t talked about the
music yet. I like that it takes some audio cues from the iconic Addams’ family
theme song, even doing a rendition of it at the end, though followed by a truly
abysmal Quavo alternative. They use pop songs throughout and few of them feel
especially fitting. Maybe there could’ve been other uses for that budget.
The Addams family (2019) is not very good, the Addams’
designs and vocal performances alongside some decent puns and slapstick gags
mean there is promise to this as a franchise but its main theme is
unfortunately dumbed down and mishandled, nullifying its meaning and honestly
also making the comedy lesser as a result. The animation is OK, I’m not
expecting Pixar level on 1/10th of their budget though the human
characters needed a redesign.
Rating 45/100
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