The Addams Family

The Addams Family cartoons created by cartoonist Charles Addams are an iconic creation that has lasted years past its creation in pop culture through games, books, fashion, and movie and tv. Focusing on an aristocratic family of five that enjoy the macabre and gloomy while being completely unaffected by the confusion from their neighbors, Addams Family acted as a satirical look at the picturesque 20^th-century American family of the era, which not only led to the cartoons adopting a gothic and darkly comedic edge that allowed them to grow timeless and appeal to many audiences, but also meant it would fit great as a tv adaptation. The 1964 ABC TV sitcom played on the tropes established within their cartoons (but now with the ability to physically portray these actions) as well as common sitcom tropes by clashing its style against the Addams’ style, resulting in a two-year run that clearly left its impact on the world, even though it wasn’t as well-known as its own counterpart also running in syndication, The Munsters. Its first steps into the cinematic lens was in 1991 when cinematographer turned director, Barry Sonnenfeld released The Addams Family movie as his screen directing debut. In the Addams family home full of creepy but bountiful bliss, Gomez Addams (played by the late Raul Julia) is mourning the absence of his beloved brother, Fester, after an argument separated them for over 25 years. While he has his wife, Morticia (played by Anjelica Huston), and his two children, Wednesday and Pugsley (played by Christina Ricci and Jimmy Workman), the hole is his heart has not been properly filled with his brother gone. This gets the attention of Gomez’s lawyer, Tully (played by Dan Hedaya) who owes a lot of money to loan shark/con artists Abigail Craven (played by Elizabeth Wilson) and informs her about the Addams’ large family fortune that could be acquired if they pose her son, Gordon (played by Christopher Llyod) as Fester. After being dressed up and creating a story surrounding Fester’s long absence, Gomez is overjoyed to have his brother back in his life, but the whole family, particularly Wednesday, can’t shake the feeling that this person isn’t Uncle Fester. But with Gordon slowly starting to warm up to the role of Uncle Fester, will he want to go through with his plans? The movie received mixed reception upon release, with many appreciating the production, visuals, atmosphere, and casting, but also felt the writing and narrative were sloppily handled.

The premise behind the Addams family is such a strong idea not only in terms of concept for how it can poke fun of several American-based lifestyles and families (which is why it worked nicely as a sitcom and managed to pull in a wider audience for the brand), but also from a visual standpoint, as the cartoons were filled with defined characters and a style that went for darkly comedic as much as it did gothic and atmospheric. Either way, it felt like it would make for a good solid movie but this process of creating one was halted due to a troubled production. The film went $5 million over-budget, was rewritten several times, Sonnenfeld himself suffered a stressful filming process with several people connected with him getting hurt during the process, and the films rights were eventually sold to Paramount after the original distributors, Orion, feared that it would be a big-budget flop and didn’t want to suffer the consequences. Thankfully, the movie did manage to earn back several times its production cost and prevented the film from being a complete flop. Despite this, the movie still received mixed reception from critics and its understandable in that regard. The movie’s narrative is sadly pretty weak; following an outdated story-line of mistaken identity and a bad person trying to get a family’s inheritance under their noses, it’s a lame storytelling and it sadly isn’t made that much more interesting in this film. It very much feels like the story is the background noise for the rest of the elements that the team clearly cared more about, and because of that, it leaves very little intrigue and unique elements for the plot (despite having a brand that can very easily be creative and fun), writing that more often than not just relies on one-liners and cute gags rather than incredibly deep writing, and a resolution that feels thrown in last second and false compared to what the film was setting up. You can feel this disconnection between what they want to focus on at the expense of the other stuff from the directing, as Barry Sonnenfeld does a great job visually showcasing the environment, as well as capturing the mood, spirit and light-hearted but slightly malicious tone of the cartoons very nicely. You can feel his passion behind the energy of the actors, the speed of the editing, and the jovial mood of a lot of the sequences, but the story feels so streamlined and so generic for a property that could make even a simple misadventure more amusing with their personalities, it unfortunately leaves the film feeling slightly mundane in comparison.

The casting for this movie was especially praised as these faces not only looked like great people to interpret these characters, but their portrayals brought such life and enjoyment to their roles that they became their own versions that weren’t competing with the sitcom’s portrayals. Its nice that the Addams have such a unique connection that separates them from other similarly presented families; their love for all things creepy and disturbing, yet that passion is so genuine that it transforms back into incredibly wholesome. There have been other stories about people enjoying bad things and living like outsiders from other people, but the ignorance that they have against other people’s fears makes them feel more engrossing and unique to watch and allows the family to come across as incredibly sweet and likeable despite doing all these messed up things. The movie doesn’t work as an origin or a beginning for the characters, instead just throwing you into this misadventure without explaining who, what or how they are, but considering the film came after the show introduced most people to them, it could be given a bit of the pass, especially due to how great the main cast are as these characters. Some roles don’t stand especially strong like Judith Malina as Garndmama, Jimmy Workman as Pugsley and Carel Struycken as Lurch as they don’t leave much of an impression outside of their base archetypes due to how little screen-time they get, but most of the others are very iconic portrayals of these iconic characters. Raul Julia is infectiously likeable as Gomez; with his extreme charm, jovial nature to the point of bouncing of the walls sometimes, carrying a sense of grace within him but also a unique sense of unpredictability that brings so much fun to what could easily be a basic father archetype. Anjelica Huston carries that warm and witty, yet blunt and often under-reacting attitude of Morticia, and her and Julia are just dripping with romantic chemistry, creating a fantastically engaging couple that feel like they are ravenous for each other in every second and delight in each other’s pleasure and even sometimes pain. Christina Ricci is wonderful as the deadpan and cryptically brutal Wednesday, resulting in great scenes with her interacting off her family in moments that just want to push how far they can take a scene with such a young child actor (she uses an electric chair in this on her brother), and Christopher Llyod as the impostor (who is actually revealed to be the real Fester with amnesia) does a good job playing the role of the fake but also the eventual real Fester, acting up against the other oddball characters, although the story around him is a little contrived and clearly rewritten last minute to end on a better note.

The film was shot on the same location that the show was shot in, allowing for a lot of the environments and production design from Richard Macdonald to feel identical to its previous outing, while still being able to capture its own sense and atmosphere thanks to Sonnenfeld’s wonderfully proactive directing and engaging cinematography by Owen Roizman that something like the sitcom wouldn’t have been able to do. Just being able to move around this house is entertaining enough, with how it mixes the normal gothic tones of colors but with a real sense of familial comfort and never a sense of dread or sullenness. The cheery way they can portray some of these gruesome even disturbing activities they do with each other is made more acceptable and even more fun due to how comfortable they are with these ideas between each other, it makes it wholesome rather than disturbing, and the production design helps lean into that with a balance between moments of atmospheric peace and letting things sink in, to more absurd comedic based moments that come across as ‘’quite charming’’. Most of the laughs come from instances like that, as the writing on both the dramatic and the comedic level by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson isn’t anything spectacular, with the drama feeling very artificial and fabricated to forcibly work in this world and set-up, and the humor being mostly relegated to puns which can waver between harmlessly cute to a little stupid. Some of the effects are a hint dated as well (Thing does look like an obvious effect in moments), but its overall not too distracting. The musical score composed by Hummie Mann and Marc Shaiman almost feels like a character in itself in parts, particular in the opening act with a piece that feels right out of Danny Elfman’s library with the amount of chorus choirs and atmospheric gothic chimes, it’s a nice melody to the point where it overshadows the random featuring of music of the time which is bizarre.

The Addams Family acts as a decently likeable movie with a great cast, effective production design and a solid directing job that visually encapsulates a lot of what made the family so great in the tv show, the cartoons and with whatever creation they are put in after (although those animated films look pretty awful). The movie sadly isn’t great as its mediocre writing and cliched and contrived story-line hold it back quite a bit, but it still results in a good time and has enough charming scenes and moments of delightfully grim material to make it worth at least a watch or two. Snap along with the tune and decide for yourself if this movie captures the spirit of the Addams Family.