Ten Days of Terror: The Addams Family (2019)

Film: The Addams Family (2019)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on the new internet machine.

I like most of the versions of The Addams Family that I have encountered, with the first two movies (yes, there is a third, with an almost entirely new cast that was considered so reprehensible that it was never released on DVD) being the pinnacle of Addams in non-print media. So I was certainly curious about the animated version that was released last year. Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron seem like good casting for Gomez and Morticia—no one is going to touch Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston—but still, not bad. Honestly, I was curious to see how this would play as a kids’ film, and wondered if the film would bring in more of the traditional elements of the original Charles Addams comics.

And in a lot of respects, The Addams Family is true to at least the concept of the characters. The film starts with the wedding of Gomez and Morticia, which is broken up by an angry mob. The family flees, and our newlyweds look for a new home, eventually finding an abandoned and haunted asylum on a hilltop in New Jersey. We doodley-doo 13 years into the future, and now we have both Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard). And, as tends to happen in such movies, we have a confluence of events.

Guess Who's Coming to Banquet

Film: Shrek 2
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

There was a time when anyone could be fairly certain that a sequel would be a step down from the original. Things have changed a bit. There are plenty of modern sequels that are equal to or better than the original film, but I can remember a time when finding a sequel that was even in the same ballpark as the original film took some thought. Now it’s not that hard to think of a film where the sequel tops the original, even though sequels are still often disappointing. So it was that I went into Shrek 2 with guarded optimism.

I like Shrek. It’s not only a good story, it’s a clever script that makes smart reference to a lot of other movies and a number of fairy tales. Shrek 2 has the unenviable task of building on that created mythology and retaining the same level of cleverness. This is not an easy task for an animated film following up a movie that not only won the inaugural Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but was good enough to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.