Film Review: The Addams Family

**Spoilers**

If you have not yet seen this film, please go and do so before proceeding.

          So...adapting old sitcoms into feature family films was a 'thing' in the 90's. The Beverly Hillbillies is the one that usually jumps into my mind when thinking about this, as it is the prime example of the reason WHY these sorts of films usually didn't work very well. And, in order to properly review The Addams Family, we need to talk about this.

       Most older sitcoms tend to really hinge most of their premise around just one joke. And, for television, that's fine. Sitcoms can get away with being formulaic, provided they are clever with it and the characters are really interesting. Some of my favorite shows (such as Hogan's Heroes or Green Acres) work this way. I know the formula and I can practically recite it by heart, but the ingenuity and the sheer force of personality that the characters have brings me back time and time again. And The Addams Family really is no different. Their gimmick is this: A casually rich family is obsessed with all things dark and deadly. That's literally it. Most of the jokes come from the fact that they are so strange and bizarre and yet they're living in suburbia. The sitcom was actually based off of a series of one-panel comics from the 1920's, and those also hinge off of the one joke.

     But as much as the sitcom does follow the formula of being centered around that one joke, it also surprisingly subverts most of the other tropes that you see in this kind of show. While normally families are portrayed as not understanding each other and being dysfunctional, one of the main things to define the Addams' is that they DO all stick together and enjoy each other's company. Morticia and Gomez are very much in love and, instead of the comedy coming from them arguing and being impatient with each other, they are very supportive and generally get into hijinks together as a team. They also share most of the job of parenting their children, Wednesday and Pugsley, together...with Gomez being just as likely to comfort one of the children after a nightmare as Morticia is.

 

           But how does this family work when applied to a 90's Hollywood 3-Act structure? Well...actually not as badly as you would think. Now the plot of this film is almost not there at all. It's very weak. And it centers around Uncle Fester, of all people! (To me, Uncle Fester is always the character that was the equivalent of the gargoyle dog from Gargoyles...he's comic relief. So I'm bewildered as to why the movie is all about his story.) He's being manipulated by a mother figure who only gets creepier the more times I watch her interactions with him. Not the good kind of Addams creepy and kooky either!

          Fortunately, though, the big, melodramatic climax that all these types of films have is very underplayed and I almost feel like the film is self-aware and more of a satire than an actual horror-comedy. And it does honestly adapt the atmosphere and charm of the sitcom very well. Everybody is perfectly cast and the dark humor and matter-of-fact way that the Addams' go about their lives is very well done. They're weird and they kind of know it and they really don't care. 

      I haven't talked much about the plot of this film, because there almost isn't one and really the best parts of the story are when things are focusing on the interaction of the family rather than the money-grubbing-lawyer-and-fake-mother plot that is duller than Wednesday's wooden sword! But this is really worth the watch and, in my humble opinion, is probably the best of the remake-old-sitcoms films batch. It's funny, it's touching, it's gross (in some places), it's dark, it's all about family...I love this film! The Addams Family is a 4/5.

What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?