The Addams Family (1991)
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
When a man claiming to be long-lost Uncle Fester reappears after 25 years lost, the family plans a celebration to wake the dead. But the kids barely have time to warm up the electric chair before Morticia begins to suspect Fester is fraud when he can't recall any of the details of Fester's life.
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What critics compared The Addams Family to
The storyline is the least engaging aspect of the film, but it still works, thanks to a fun vibe which resembles that of another big screen update of an old television series about a spooky dysfunctional clan: 1991’s “The Addams Family.”
Barry Sonnenfeld may have hit the proverbial coffin nail on the family’s head with The Addams Family movie, but there are too many moments in this incarnation of Dark Shadows (especially at the end of the film) where all of the characters seem to be sitting around waiting for everyone else to do something while the audience is waiting for ANYTHING to happen.
One of the station’s walls becomes inexplicably porous and devours an arm, transporting it elsewhere and somehow giving it a mind of its own (think Thing from The Addams Family, but with an elbow).
It’s not every day that a sci-fi movie will make you think of “The Addams Family,” but each time “The Cloverfield Paradox” leans campy and “The Twilight Zone”-style strange, Onah disappointingly throws the picture back into gravity.
The latest attempt to cash in on the Internet cat craze comes from director Barry Sonnenfeld (best known as cinematographer for the Coens-turned-director ofThe Addams Family and the Men in Black trilogy).
It is a mystery, though, why Barry Sonnenfeld (director of The Addams Family and Men In Black) and his cast were drawn to such skittish material.
Industry veteran Barry Sonnenfeld (cinematographer of Raising Arizona and Misery, director of The Addams Family and Men in Black) seems to have collapsed at the wheel, leaving his actors—including Jennifer Garner, Cheryl Hines, and Christopher Walken—to do a lot of mugging for their paychecks.
Former comic lion Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black and The Addams Family) plays the jokes sloppy and quick.
And yet here it is, not on the Disney Channel, and not even from Disney! Somehow it accidentally stars Kevin Spacey, too, and was inadvertently directed by semi-respected filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld (“Men in Black,” “The Addams Family”).
The fact that it was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who started as the cinematographer best known for shooting the Coen Brothers' first three films and then distinguished himself in the 1990s as a director of smart, funny Hollywood fare like The Addams Family (1993), Get Shorty (1995), and Men in Black (1997), is testament to the depths to which his career has sunk, having arguably never recovered from the big-budget debacle that was Wild Wild West (1999).
Tim Burton, who struggled to tie together The Addams Family-like Dark Shadows and make much of a muchness with Alice in Wonderland, finds surer footing on the grounds of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
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During bedtime reading, she accidentally opens a hexed book, and into their lives comes a scary yet cartoonish new boogeyman — the Babadook, a creature that looks like Slash from Guns N’ Roses crossed with Cousin Itt from “The Addams Family.”
Instead, "The Addams Family" marks the directing debut of Barry Sonnenfeld, an innovative cinematographer whose jazziest work includes "Misery," "Raising Arizona" and "Three O'Clock High."
Instead, "The Addams Family" marks the directing debut of Barry Sonnenfeld, an innovative cinematographer whose jazziest work includes "Misery," "Raising Arizona" and "Three O'Clock High."
The whole thing seems like it was pitched as “Austin Powers meets The Addams Family, with maybe some of that self-referential humor from The Brady Bunch Movie.”