I think I’ve well established my love for happy characters.
Because I’m sick of stories that think a character can’t be happy and
interesting. Superman, Elwood P Dowd, Steven Universe, they are all generally
happy people and are some of the most interesting characters I’ve ever seen.
The Addams Family are sort of the same, but not in the way you would expect
them to be.
The Addams Family was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and stars
Raúl Juliá, Anjelica Huston & Christopher Lloyd. It’s based on the comic
strip from The New Yorker in the late 1930s, though takes more after the 1960s
TV Series. The film follows the titular family, a group of gothic, twisted yet
overall pleasant family that don’t fit in with societies norms. Though that’s
more of the basic concept behind the family, there is an actual plot to the
film, but let’s be honest no one cares. The Addams Family is not a film (Or
even concept) that relies on plot, but rather characters, seeing the members of
the Addams Family interacting with one another or with regular people, that’s
the draw and that’s the best thing about the film. Heck, the film seems to care
so little for the plot it almost forgets to have a climax and resolution, they
throw in the most half-arsed explanation for everything as a joke, as if they’re
saying “We don’t care. You don’t care. Let’s just get back to what you’re here
for” and I actually appreciate that mindset. Knowing where your strongest
elements are and choosing to focus on that instead of conventional narrative.
If anything that’s thematically fitting, The Addams Family are not a
conventional family, they don’t want to be a conventional family, they do what
they think is fun and are proud of it, so it makes perfect sense for their film
to represent that. I’m not sure if this was intentional or just a coincidence
but either way it works really well.
But to go back to what I opened this with, unlike the other
happy characters I mentioned, The Addams Family are a dark & twisted group
of people, loving torture, gothic imagery, constantly harming one another, and
they are having so much fun while doing it. They never do anything mean
spirited because everything is consensual and confined to just other members of
the family. It’s morbid yet pleasant, dark yet charming, gothic yet heart-warming.
There’s also something to be said about where the actual humour comes from;
never in the film are we meant to laugh at
the family, we’re never going “oh teehee, aren’t they so bizarre?” the victim
of the joke are always normal people, the ones who are uncomfortable with the
fact the Addams Family are spooky but are completely comfortable with themselves.
But it’s never mean spirited, anytime the family hurt or scare someone it’s
always accidental, and really they’re not doing anything wrong, they’re just
exposing their world view to others and the contrast is where the humour comes
from. Hell, I think this might be the only family movie with an S&M joke in
it.
Especially when you take into consideration the standard
tropes of the sitcom family that the original TV show subverted and the film carries
over. There aren’t any jokes about the mother-in-law, or the slob of a husband
with a nagging housewife and delinquent kids. The family themselves get along
extremely well, they love each other and the only time there is ever actually
anything that bothers them is when someone in the family is in trouble. Both
Mortecia and Gomez, the parents of the family not only have an incredibly
lively and passionate relationship-both emotionally and physically-but the two
spend an equal amount of time taking care of their kids and acting like real
parents. The kids themselves also get along really well, despite always
attempted to murder each other, but to them it’s just a game, they never bicker
or bully one another.
Lots of people like to complain that cinema is in a broken
age of nostalgia, rebooting things from the 80s & 90s as a way to make a
quick buck, even if the product themselves isn’t any good. But people seem to
forget that Hollywood has been doing this for decades now. The Flintstones,
Wild Wild West, Lost in Space, all 90s films based on 60s/70s properties and
most of them were absolutely terrible. The Addams Family was not only one of
the first ones, but is also one of the best. An adaptation that shows the
people behind it understood what made the original so successful and also going
against typical Hollywood conventions, refusing to change it for the sake of
seeming more modern. Well okay there are some jokes based on “modern” events
but they never seem like they don’t fit, it’s all about the contrast of
normality vs The Addams Family. And yes while it does technically have a plot
with drama and an act structure and a climax and all that stuff, like I said, that
gets such little focus they might as well not have bothered. I get the sense
this was Hollywood producers telling them they needed to have an actual plot so
the crew just made the weakest plot needed and said “There ya go, can we go
have fun now?”.
The final note to mention is the casting, which is
pitch-fucking-perfect. Almost everyone in this film plays their roles exactly
how they were in the original show and even surpasses them. Raúl Juliá as Gomez
is an over the top manchild who loves expressing his passion for life. Anjelica
Huston as Morticia is gleefully monotone with a subtle confidence to her body
language. But let’s be honest the best thing about this franchise was Christina
Ricci as Wednesday, her sadistic and homicidal behaviour with almost zero fucks
to give about anything makes her perfect for this. Lots of people like to
describe an actor as being “born for the role” but if it was revealed Ricci was
created and moulded by god himself just so she would be a perfect fit for this
role, I’d believe it.
The Addams Family almost has no right to be as good as it
actually is, it’s a product of two massively terrible trends in the 90s,
nostalgia driven adaptations of classic TV shows and heavily gothic based films
made to rip-off Tim Burton. Yet somehow against all odds this is a film that
came out with a fantastic cast, a director who clearly understood what made the
property great in the first place and a subversion of comedy tropes of the
time. This isn’t just one of my favourite films, this is one of the best adaptations
ever made and I-adore-it.
-Danny
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