What I’m watching: new animated film based on Charles Addams charactersDate: 10/30/2019 What I’m watching: The new animated film based on the characters created by Charles Addams.
In Theaters: The Addams Family
A treat of my childhood was to watch the black and white television series based on the characters created by the brilliant cartoonist Charles Addams. I’m happy to say a recent viewing confirmed that show – first broadcast for two seasons in the mid-1960s – holds up nicely. The new animated feature film, “The Addams Family” is a successful amalgam of the original Addams characters, the TV show and the two more recent live-action feature films.
Addams contributed to the original TV show by fleshing out the characters he first introduced in 1938. The characters received names and the concept the family was happy and positive people whose orientation to life was simply different than the mainstream.
What I always liked about the TV series and the two feature films was the fact the family acknowledged that other people lived differently but never denigrated them. They often expressed sympathy for them. They were “normal,” and the mainstream was not.
The TV version had innocence about them as many of the TV shows were based around someone thinking they could swindle the family, but never could.
Some people have put forth the notion that “The Addams Family” TV show has been a primary influence in the Goth movement of style and sensibility. I can see that.
Much of that sensibility is in the new movie.
Director of the new film, Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, have in-depth experience in animation and it shows with this film. They restored the look of several key family members – father Gomez and daughter Wednesday – to closer to the way Addams designed them, while establishing their own visual style for other characters.
They also wisely presented a story, which followed in the tradition set by other productions: the Addams family is able to overcome – or tolerate – thoughtless prejudice.
In this new film – it is sort of an origin story for a new generation – we see Morticia and Gomez get married and subsequently get run out of town by “normal” people. They escape to New Jersey where they find an ideal home – an abandoned asylum.
Their life is fine over the years until son Pugsley approaches the age for an Addams rite of adulthood. This happens just as Wednesday discovers the nearby town and teenaged peers.
The family’s existence is discovered and threatened by a real estate promoter and house-flipper who can not abide with the creepy Addams estate overlooking her newly built tract of 50 homes.
What transpires are both an affirmation of values and a triumph of the individual over the mob.
There are a lot of little throwaway gags that I enjoyed as well as a neat design sense. I loved the fact that Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara provided the voices of Morticia’s deceased parents. O’Hara did her great Katherine Hepburn impersonation, while Short used the voice of his veteran Tin Pan Alley composer Irving Cohen character.
The result is a solidly made and enjoyable film with material for both the kids and the adults. It has a great message of tolerance, which we can use these days.
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