In an educational community where everyone gets first place because there are no losers, Wednesday should have demanded a recount on principle. The movie’s Wednesday, voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, also commits a grievous sin, and it’s not only because she betrays her character and The Addams Family’s core concept by eagerly buying into the idea she may have been switched at birth from a more respectable family the movie likewise opens as she receives a first-place prize at a Science Fair. Their road trip from Salem, Massachusetts, to Death Valley, the threadbare vehicle for this movie’s plot, is best viewed by rubberneckers who’ll be disappointed by the pristine wreckage.

Yes, the Addams go to the beach here, and not just so Uncle Fester can clear it by wearing a shark-fin swimsuit. This is made abundantly clear when you see him in a bathing suit in The Addams Family 2. Oscar Isaac voices Gomez against Charlize Theron’s Morticia, and the only thing these recent animated films get right from the comic is that he married way above his class. Crawl off your broomsticks, throw on a shawl, and if you’re popping anything livelier than corn, remember to play with your food while you watch. Thus here are the six motion pictures shaken from Chas Addams’ family tree, from the weakest root to the perennially petrified. The sisters, brothers, grandmamas, aunt Calpurnias, cousin Itts, and Things who carry the Addams name are always ready for a closeup.īut before Burton returned the Addams to their television roots, the kooky and spooky family went forth and multiplied on the big screen, including in a handful of films that for younger generations are the definitive Addams adventures. It’s the first major live-action television Addams series since The New Addams Family revival in the late ‘90s-and the first good one since ABC made the characters iconic in 1964. Touted as a supernaturally infused mystery set at the Nevermore Academy, Wednesday will get a full cinematic treatment as a series on Netflix. The cast also includes Christina Ricci, the most iconic Wednesday Addams from the 1990s films directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. So it is a shame we’ll never know what the cartoonist would’ve thought of Tim Burton’s Wednesday, the latest and most promising adaptation of the warped family entertainment for televised consumption in quite some time.įeaturing Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, and Luis Guzmán as family patriarch Gomez, Wednesday stars Jenna Ortega as the title character. It was created in 1938 as a series of unrelated single-panel cartoons by Charles Addams, the only cartoonist The New Yorker magazine ever recommended for psychiatric evaluation. It is as much a sideshow as a franchise, and equal parts parachute, noose, and straitjacket.

The Addams Family is an icon of happy madness, morbid fun, and macabre amusement.

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