The Addams Family

The Addams Family isn’t that creepy and not very spooky, but it’s decently kooky — if you’re a kid.

Everyone has a favorite version of the iconic clan, and this latest computer-animated attempt by Sausage Party directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan is, unfortunately, decidedly not mine. If I were to channel my inner Wednesday Addams while watching this film, I’d simply say, “Mildly entertaining, way too cutesy, definitely not enough homicide. Two out of five black hearts.”

We meet Morticia and Gomez on their dark and stormy wedding night, surrounded by their grotesque friends, grim family members and a bloodthirsty mob of villagers who are dead set on running the ”monstrous” family out of town. With the help of Gomez’s brother, Uncle Fester, the couple escapes the angry hoard’s clutches and drives their hearse all the way to “somewhere no one in their right mind would be caught dead in” — aka New Jersey, which is not only a clever knock but a worthy wink to creator Charles Addams’ home state. They settle down on a fog-covered mountaintop, in an abandoned insane asylum with bleeding walls and begin their happily joyless lives together.

Fast forward 13 years, and the real story begins, sort of. The narrative centers on Pugsley’s impending rite of passage — his mazurka — which serves as a type of gothic bar mitzvah, complete with ancient sword fighting choreography and a reading from The Terror. Since the entire extended Addams clan is set to visit for this occasion, the pressure is on for Pugsley to impress his father and officially join his family’s lineage.

Peppered with an encouraging dose of familiar morbidity that loyal Addams audiences are used to — Wednesday sleeping beneath a guillotine, Lurch and Thing playing Dracula duets on the piano, Morticia and Gomez making creepy bedroom eyes at one another — the film initially feels acutely aware of its dark and twisty on-screen predecessors. Small, clever glimpses like Thing covertly scrolling through foot fetish websites and Lurch secretly reading Louisa May Alcott’s feminist classic Little Women mirror that signature subtle Addams family wit with surprising ease. However, the reliance on comically grim gags wanes as the predictable plot sets in and all but disappears for much of the film.

Though the latest iteration looks eerily similar to Addams’ original cartoon renderings, the surprisingly flat imagery leaves much to be desired. Perhaps Pixar’s and Disney’s collective insistence on strikingly realistic animation has rendered my expectations too high, but I couldn’t help but be bothered by the largely plain depictions of these famously eccentric fictional characters.

Each Addams family member appears distractingly simplistic and undetailed, and lacks a noticeable amount of visual texture and complexity. No character suffers from this more than Wednesday. Her blank white face and vague expressions attempt to convey her deadpan delivery but don’t translate well on screen. Instead, she comes across as virtually devoid of her signature smarts and snark. She reads as dull, unmotivated and depressing, even going so far as to ask what “the opposite of sad” is. Except for a brief foray as the Dr. Frankenstein of her science class — in which a laboratory full of soon-to-be dissected frogs is electrocuted and brought back to life — and a gross-out moment of gleeful biting into a moldy sandwich, this Wednesday isn’t the morbidly curious homicidal maniac we all know her to be. Instead, she comes off as her own worst nightmare — she’s actually pretty boring.

I’d argue that a good percentage of the voice acting adds to this unfortunate character-narrative disconnection, primarily in the form of Chloë Grace Moretz’s uncharacteristically ordinary Wednesday and Charlize Theron’s disappointingly drab Morticia. These lackluster performances become much more apparent against Oscar Isaac’s charismatic portrayal of Gomez and Finn Wolfhard’s mischievous Pugsley. Bette Middler serves an over-the-top animated version of her infamous Hocus Pocus witch in the form of Grandma, a rendition that comes as a welcome jolt of dramatic flair amid a largely underwhelming string of voice performances.

Elsewhere, Allison Janney swoops in as the suspiciously bubbly HGTV personality/nosy neighborhood villain, Margaux Needler, and with the exception of a few snippy quips and a ridiculously loud “mom” wardrobe straight out of I, Tonya, her character feels largely unrelatable. Snoop Dogg’s credit as It (his portrayal has inexplicably dropped the “Cousin” and extra “T”) feels altogether gimmicky, as he rolls up in a pimped out car to the tune of his overplayed 2004 hit “Drop It Like It’s Hot” — though I suspect the moment signals enough comedic relief to get the kids in the audience laughing. Overall, a cast this star-studded should shine, but the performances either feel largely forced and disingenuous (Moretz and Janney) or shoulder-shrugging and blah (Theron and Mr. Dogg).

One of the only bright spots in this department is Elsie Fisher’s earnest portrayal of Parker Needler, especially amid her pairing with Moretz’s mostly woeless Wednesday. But the film’s glossing over of their unlikely friendship feels like another missed opportunity, most notably when the girls switch personas. Give me the female friendship film starring Wednesday wearing pink (dubbed “the gateway color”) and Parker going goth! (I need to see more of the latter’s half-shaven head and witchy makeup, please.) Instead, the narrative largely focuses on Margaux’s not-so-secretly seedy intentions and drains the film of any substantial character development.

More than anything, though, this film is a broad allegory for acceptance — within oneself, one’s family and one’s community — and tolerance of those who are different from us. It’s a repetitive kid-friendly narrative by now, but I’d be remiss not to mention the film’s ultimately successful attempt to deliver its good-natured message. With an emphasis on Margaux’s capitalism-obsessed suburban creation — aptly titled “Assimilation Park” — and the homogenous culture such environments create, The Addams Family takes a stab at themes of otherness, defying the status quo and immigration with commendable effort.

It goes so far as to have suburban children in the town square singing such lyrics as, “Why be different when you can be like everyone else?” and “It’s so easy to be happy when you have no choice.” These are the bold, pithy subjects for which the Addams Family brand is known, and if the film had zeroed in on these themes more sharply, it would have been a much more engaging story to watch.

With all of its faults, it’s still entertaining enough to captivate a younger audience’s attention, and, to that end, it’s certainly not the type of film you’d dread having to take your children to. But even with laugh-out-loud moments like Lurch’s wistful organ rendition of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” — a moment of peak “sad boi” culture that makes him an iconic character in own right — it’s just not memorable enough to revisit, unlike the terrific live-action versions from the early ’90s. Ultimately, The Addams Family’s central message is tidy and hopeful, which makes it feel a little too saccharine for its subjects. It’s a supersweetened version of the delightfully bitter drink of poison we’re used to. There’s no boldness or bite, but if you’re looking for a kid-friendly entry into their weird world of woe, The Addams Family is an (ironically) pleasant starting point.