The Addams Family

References to other (more original) movies, gross-out humour (phlegm and candles make a good match), bombs (whyyyy?), and a moral message about as subtle as a town called Assimilation (not kidding). The Addams Family is an amusing little waste of time sure to please a few and none very much.

At their wedding, Morticia and Gomez are forced to flee and end up in what is, in their reckoning, the most dreadful place, New Jersey, atop a mountainous crag, befouled by a stenchful marsh gas. It is a perfect place to start their own family, as everything is horrible. 

The narrative resumes 13 years later, with daughter Wednesday showing signs of rebellion and son Pugsley a budding explosives maniac. Their idyll is interrupted when a home-renovation show and its host build a new town where everyone is happily the same. 

The Addams Family has some fun touches for adults, such as Thing embarrassedly hiding his mooning over internet images of bare feet, and evoking the theme music from the original show, which almost inspires finger-snapping. But the wackiness all but disappears into lessons about inclusivity that, though well-meaning, are repetitive to the point of meaninglessness. Be nice to people who are different, we’re not all that different. If the movie-makers really wanted to entertain the littlies, they should have a look at some of the pre-show advertising, which created more response from them than anything in the movie, like watching someone stick a Twistie up their nose. Eewww! That works.

★★ ½

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Reviewed by Olga Azar