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.

Off Script: The Addams Family

Film: The Addams Family
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

I’m just going to cut to the chase here and say that I really, really like The Addams Family and get that out of the way. There’s a lot here to love, not the least of which being the connection to both the original comics and the old black-and-white television show. It’s an update, though, and in being updated, it’s been made both darker and funnier. In the television show, the Addamses were always a touch malevolent, but in the movie, they are openly homicidal (but always in a fun way). There’s a sense of funhouse danger with the Addamses, as if they’re just having fun, but that their brand of fun includes lighthearted attempts to kill each other or guests.

This is also a movie that is so perfectly cast that it’s impossible to find complaint with it. Admittedly, Judith Malina was replaced as Grandmama by the always-adorably entertaining Carol Kane and Jimmy Workman, who played Pugsley, hasn’t done much outside of these films, but there’s a lot to praise in the casting otherwise. This movie and its sequel were the movies that made the career of Christina Ricci (who played Wednesday), and it’s always nice to see Dan Hedaya and Carel Struycken, but I’m talking specifically about the three main characters here.