Film Review – The Addams Family
The Addams Family (PG)
Directed by: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz
Three and a half stars
Review by: Julian Wright
The kooky, spooky, ooky Addams family gets the origins treatment and a new adventure in an animated feature film with a top notch cast.
After being run out of town on their wedding night by picketing bigots, the wonderfully weird and delightfully dark Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) retreat to a gloomy abandoned asylum and make it their humble abode.
Several years later, a cookie cutter housing estate develops at the bottom of the hill, which causes friction between the Addams’ and the new residents.
Meanwhile, overly bubbly reality star and resident Margaux Needler (Allison Janney) tries to get rid of the macabre family as her daughter Parker (Elsie Fisher) befriends Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and begins to take on gothic features.
Having been absent from screens for a while now, it was fun to see the Addams Family resurrected, with the macabre humour always good for giggle for anyone who has a dark sense of humour.
The cast is terrific, with Isaac’s perfectly animated as Gomez and Moretz appropriately glum as Wednesday. It is only Theron as Morticia who confuses with a strange accent and inflections that don’t make much sense.
The pace occasionally dips between the amusing gags, both verbal and visual, which may cause younger ones to become restless.
This new story plays it safe and doesn’t do much in the way of bringing the family into a modern era, side-stepping political and social commentary, other than a message to be yourself.
A nice message, to be sure, but there might have been ab it more for the grown ups to sink their teeth into had it touched on more current topics.
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