As a kid who loved all things spooky and weird, I loved The Addams Family. John Astin as Gomez was the best (I got to meet him years later in college when he starred as Edgar Allen Poe in the show "Once Upon a Midnight " and I was a huge, embarrassing fangirl, I assure you). I've enjoyed everything Addams Family related for most of my life, so I was excited to check out this adaptation when it was released last year. I finally got to watch it today.
This movie shows us how the Addams Family came to live in their house and build their weird little family. Later, once they're established in their home, they prepare for a visit from relatives, meanwhile a scheming television star plans to remodel their home, so it will blend into the neighborhood better and she can sell the whole neighborhood to buyers and make lots of money. Has the Addams Family met their match? Will greed be the end of the family's peaceful existence?
The movie actually made me laugh out loud more than once (I also spit almond milk on my phone at one joke). Well played, movie. I also like the plot, how the Addams kids want to know more about the world outside the gate that surrounds their secluded home. After seeing how Gomez and Morticia were treated like monsters for being different, it makes sense they would want to keep to themselves. The outside world is horrible, yo. I would probably do the same thing if I could.
The struggle between the oddball family and the outside world is relateable, which makes the movie more interesting for me. Once the family decides to try and make friends in the town below their estate, seeing them clash with the neighbors is familiar (individuality isn't always valued above blending in, amirite?) I can get behind the idea that they want to try and get along with their neighbors for the sake of their kids. Again, I'd probably feel the same way. I guess I was meant to be a member of the Addams Family. I always suspected as much.
The voice actors give a lot of spirit to the movie (get it? Spirit?) Chloe Grace Moretz absolutely nails her part as Wednesday Addams. Charlize Theron has some great lines as Morticia as well. I never knew she could be this funny. Color me impressed.
This movie delves more into the idea that Wednesday wants to attend a local school in the town instead of being homeschooled as she was for most of her life. I was "homeschooled" as a kid too, which amounted to my mom paying tuition at an accredited homeschool so she could keep me home in her paranoid, delusional world where she could keep me "safe." I know there are good homeschooling parents, but my messed up childhood makes me relate to the feeling of wanting to go to school with other kids and fit in (and also being too weird to really fit in whenever I did try).
I also liked how Wednesday makes a friend at her new school and starts to want to dress more like her friend, which of course freaks out her mother, meanwhile the new friend wants to be more like Wednesday, which leads to the realization that by insisting that their kids be weird and different, the Addams' are actually forcing their kids to conform too, and it's not right when anyone does it. The best thing is to let kids (and adults!) be whoever they are and not stifle their creativity. A lot of kids' movies have similar messages, but thie one is eerie and funny, so it's a cut above the rest, at least as far as I'm concerned. The end of this movie actually reminds me a bit of the ending to "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," and they both share some similar themes, but this movie is more fun. I dug it.
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