Image from imdb.com
The latest adaptation of “the altogether ooky” Addams Family comes in the form of an animated movie featuring the voices of Oscar Isaac (Gomez), Charlize Theron (Morticia), Chloë Grace Moretz (Wednesday), Finn Wolfhard (Pugsley), Nick Kroll (Uncle Fester), Snoop Dogg (Cousin Itt), and BetteMidler (Grandmama).
This version begins with the wedding of Gomez and Morticia before they are run out of their town by the other townspeople that are tired of how weird and strange they think they are. The couple decides to settle in New Jersey in an old abandoned asylum upon a hilltop. Flash-forward thirteen years later and the couple now has two children, Wednesday and Pugsley. Wednesday is lonely and longing for the world outside of the gates of the fog-ridden property, while Pugsley prepares for his Mazurka, a family tradition at his age.
Down below them, reality TV show host, Margaux Needler (voiced by Allison Janney), is developing a new town called “Assimilation.” For her show’s upcoming season finale, viewers will win the new houses that they have seen her building. Once the fog surrounding the Addams family’s property lifts one day, she is determined to either makeover their home to match the rest of the town or run them out so she can do it anyway.
The movie takes a shift from ordinary family Halloween fare to political very quickly when narcissistic, over-the-top, reality TV star Margaux (sporting her signature swooped over blonde hair) begins writing outrageous lies about the Addams family on social media to the people within the new town to get them to run these “outsiders” out. Once she concocts a lie that is enough to push the people of Assimilation over the edge, they all open a simulation of a burning torch on their phones and march over to the Addams family’s property.
The movie makes a point to show that the people that are most against the Addams family are the older people within the “assimilated” town. When Wednesday is finally able to go to junior high, she has less of a problem fitting in and being accepted. She even becomes best friends with Parker (voiced by Elsie Fisher), Margaux’s daughter who doesn’t get along with her mother or agree with her.
The current trendy animation style of the past few years of super skinny elongated or super wide short bodies actually works in The Addams Family because the family resembles their original 1930’s comic incarnations. Bringing this timeless family into the modern day and mixing them within our current political climate makes The Addams Family feel familiar, yet fresh as it looks at immigration and family customs in its own way.
