The Addams Family (2019)
Directed by Conrad Vernon
The Addams family's lives begin to unravel when they face-off against a treacherous, greedy crafty reality-TV host while also preparing for their extended family to arrive for a major celebration.
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4 films that influenced The Addams Family
What critics say influenced The Addams Family
Clearly aimed at the same audience that have lapped up the trio of similarly themed Hotel Transylvania movies (although that series has far more common in the Addams' TV rival The Munsters ), Sausage Party duo Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon's take is a darkly sweet allegory about being who you are.
Adam Sandler has pulled it off three times as Count Dadula in the “Hotel Transylvania” series.
The standard of the animation, however, is less than lush, and doesn't sit well in comparison with most recent studio releases, such as the similar Hotel Transylvania franchise.
But this movie somehow looks even harsher and less detailed than the similarly conceived Hotel Transylvania series; there’s not much texture here, not much visual complexity.
We get a glimpse at Thing’s secret foot fetish, while there are nods to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island .
It’s because of the whole rise of kiddie monster culture, which was kicked into overdrive by Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), followed by such creature-feature black comedies as Burton’s “Corpse Bride” (2005), the bravura “Coraline” (2009), the “Hotel Transylvania” films, and TV cartoons like “Vampirina” (which I watch religiously with my 6-year-old daughter).
The movie combines all that with a battle against one of those conformist towns, like the city of awesomeness in “The Lego Movie” or the starliner Axiom in “WALL·E” or the Institute of Perfection in “UglyDolls,” that have become so satirically commonplace that they’re barely satirizing conformity anymore.