Reviews
‘The Addams Family’ (1991) First-Time Watch Review
Whether it’s for the first time or a long overdue revisit, 1991’s The Addams Family is well worth a watch. Despite its narrative weaknesses, it’s well worth spending 99 minutes basking in The Addams Family‘s atmosphere and comic sensibilities.
Look, I’ve always been more of a Munsters guy. That’s my meager defense for the only Addams Family project I have directly engaged with being the pinball machine. But I have now rectified this with a first-time watch of the 1991 gateway horror classic, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.
For those who need a refresher, or are in the same boat as I was, here’s a quick plot synopsis. The Addams family exists. They’re weird. They delight in the macabre, to the dismay of the square society that surrounds them. Are they monsters? No, except maybe the Frankensteinian butler Lurch (Carel Struycken). Are they supernatural? No. Except maybe the disembodied hand, Thing (Christopher Hart). Are they witches? …Not really? Mother Morticia (Anjelica Huston) studied hexes in college, and matriarch Grandmama (Judith Malina) mixes bizarre ingredients in a cauldron. But it’s not like they’re casting spells or anything. The whole family is just kind of… doing their thing. Including encouraging their children, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), to experiment with sharp objects and casual manslaughter.
Amid their antics, there’s a plot quietly sputtering around. Lawyer Tully Alford (Dan Hedaya) is trying to steal the Addams’ fortune to repay loan shark Abigail Craven (Elizabeth Wilson). They collude on a scheme to disguise Abigail’s son Gordon (Christopher Lloyd) as Gomez Addams’ (Raul Julia) long-lost brother Fester. Gordon begins to love the Addams’ lifestyle and doubts his mission, delaying his betrayal as long as possible.
Is The Movie A Good Introduction to The Addams Family?
Even as a novice to the franchise, cultural osmosis has taught me who the Addams family is. Going in, I knew everyone’s names except for Grandmama (a character I had heretofore not even known existed). And I knew the overall vibes of Wednesday, Morticia, Lurch, Thing, and Cousin Itt (John Franklin). I imagine many people (who haven’t already watched Netflix’s über-popular Wednesday) would be in the same boat as me. However, notice that I haven’t listed any of the male characters with speaking roles.
There’s a reason for this. The men simply aren’t as interesting. Take Pugsley, for example. What is his deal? He’s kind of just a regular-looking, regular-acting kid whose macabre sensibility is a pale shadow of his inimitable sister’s. It doesn’t help that Workman is giving the only dud performance of the movie. (Not to blame Workman. Getting a good performance from a child actor requires strong chemistry between the actor and the director. This is something that Sonnenfeld and Ricci clearly had in spades, but you can’t win ‘em all.)
And Gomez Addams is a character who has always been somewhat vague to me. The Addams Family movie didn’t exactly clear things up. I imagine he’s supposed to be a bit of a “Latin lover” archetype? He’s Don Juan meets Don Quixote, and Raul Julia brings that to life with cartoonish aplomb. And to be fair, cartoonish is the name of the game here. The franchise started as a comic strip, after all, and the movie brings that to life very well. Every character is smashing their “thing” with a sledgehammer and brilliantly exaggerating their faces and movements. It’s just that Gomez doesn’t really click with the goth vibe of his family. Morticia and Wednesday are chilly and cadaverous. The hot-blooded energy of Julia’s Gomez stands out in sharp relief against them, rendering him more irritating than fun.
Regardless of the fact that Gomez’s character leans on questionable stereotypes and doesn’t quite land, you get him. And, give or take a Pugsley, the movie properly introduced me, the newbie, to the rest of Gomez’s immediate family.
However, as a first-time viewer, I didn’t get Uncle Fester at all. I imagine it requires a more thorough understanding of Fester as a character to fully grasp the whole imposter storyline. The movie plays it like there are huge differences between Gordon (as he understands himself) and Fester. However, not having met Fester, I was baffled by what these differences were supposed to be in the first place. Gordon is already an incredibly weird, cartoonish character before the Fester element even comes into play. Thus, the fact that the entire plot hangs on this balance is a huge mistake. Christopher Lloyd plays both characters admirably, at least. He harnesses the cartoon energy he had already displayed in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, to great effect.
Does The Addams Family Hold Up?
I did find that my biggest gripes with the movie were with how the Addams family functioned as characters. I assume this is endemic to the franchise, though I of course cannot be certain. Regardless of these quibbles, the movie is quite a lot of fun when taken on its own terms.
For one thing, the production design is exquisite. The Addams family lives in a gothic funhouse that is stuffed with detail yet not too fussily over-designed. This is another way that the movie successfully elicits the feeling of a comic strip come to life. Its imagery is clean and clear, but packed with wonder. From the rotating bookcase doorway to the dizzying labyrinth of the family cemetery, it’s any imaginative child’s dream haunted house. The stylized costumes and lighting also go a long way toward draping the whole movie in the perfect Halloween-y atmosphere.
The score by Marc Shaiman also perfectly evokes this vibe. It’s a bit “Danny Elfman with the edges sanded off,” but it does the job nicely. And it certainly does so much better than the needle drops on the soundtrack. These are without doubt the worst moments of the movie. The MC Hammer theme song that closes the movie, “Addams Groove,” is flop-sweaty and corny, for one thing. Those aspects lend to it being nostalgically remembered, so I ultimately don’t think I’d cut it. But the Kipper Kids song “Playmates,” which explodes onto the soundtrack during the slide scene, is maximally intrusive. It’s poorly mixed with the sound of the scene, rendering the goings-on much too chaotic. The biggest sin of “Addams Groove” is that it grounds the otherwise timeless movie a little too much in the 1990s. “Playmates,” on the other hand, is grotesquely juvenile.
That song feels intrusive because The Addams Family otherwise resolutely rides the line between fun kiddy fare and edgy dark comedy. Although the movie is rated PG-13, the dialogue between the amorous Morticia and Gomez alludes to downright NC-17 behavior. It lends a deliciously salacious edge to a movie that deftly balances tones like almost no horror-comedy before or after. Violence is blended with vaudevillian comedy in a way that somehow makes the former convivial and the latter downright naughty.
A lot of this tonal balancing comes down to the acting. While Lloyd and Julia are providing a solid cartoonish bedrock, the women of the cast are doing the heavy lifting. Frankly, Elizabeth Wilson is the single element that holds the Fester storyline together. Her hilariously broad performance makes the moments where the movie is reluctantly compelled to have a plot still feel enjoyable. Additionally, Abigail’s power over Gordon is what fuels the engine of the story. Without the simmering maternal menace that lurks behind Wilson’s words, that storyline would have flat-out failed.
Whenever the movie relaxes and simply focuses on the Addamses freaking out normies, Wednesday and Morticia are the effervescent lynchpins. Christina Ricci’s deadpan eeriness is superb and probably lands her among the Top 5 child performances of the 1990s. (Off the top of my head, I’d slot her just behind #1, Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.) But the majority of this film’s success lands squarely on Anjelica Huston’s shoulders. Her Morticia is imperious and unknowable. She has the eternal upper hand. She’s the cat with her paw on the mouse’s tail, daring it to run. She’s sinuous, sensual, maternal, and makes every minute movement of her hands or face feel like a whip cracking. She lingers lovingly over every morbid punchline, tossing them off casually in ways that make them feel ten times stronger.
I really can’t say enough about Huston. But I’ve already far exceeded my word count, so I’ll leave everybody with this. Whether it’s for the first time or a long overdue revisit, 1991’s The Addams Family is well worth a watch. This is true, even though I am led to understand that its 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values is superior. Keep an eye out for my review of that soon. Despite its narrative weaknesses, it’s well worth spending 99 minutes basking in The Addams Family‘s atmosphere and comic sensibilities.
The act of cutting and stitching can grant new life to a long dead prospect, or it can unleash a monster. Dr. Frankenstein understood the stakes, as does any filmmaker aiming to salvage the unsalvageable. The X-Files creator Chris Carter hopes for a celebratory resurrection – or at least the chance to right some cinematic wrongs – with a recut of his 2008 movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Hulu dropped this new version on August 14 under the appropriately cobbled-together title, The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn. Carter insists it’s the edgy cut he’d always envisioned, untainted by notes from studio executives who wanted a sanitized PG-13 summer blockbuster.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe Gets a New Cut
If you’re not a die-hard X-phile, you could be excused for not even remembering the 2008 version of I Want to Believe. The box office bomb was released six years after the original show’s divisive series ending, in which Mulder and Scully depart from their X-Files post and become fugitives hunted by the FBI. Despite the open-ended nature of the TV finale, I Want to Believe was touted before its initial release as a Mulder-Scully reunion that would serve as a one-off case: the film would contain no references to the show’s ongoing mythology, which involved a convoluted alien conspiracy. This approach was welcomed by many fans who admired the scope and style of the first X-Files feature film, 1998’s Fight the Future, but longed to see a cinematic version of the show’s scary standalone tales like “Beyond the Sea” or “Home.”
Why the Original I Want to Believe Failed
Alas, the 2008 film is a plodding mess. Co-written (with Frank Spotnitz) and directed by Carter, the movie sees Mulder (David Duchovny, in all his deadpan glory) and Scully (Gillian Anderson, with all her understated power) co-habitating and keeping a low profile. Despite their fugitive status, the FBI enlists their help to find a missing agent. “All is forgiven,” the characters note, before it’s back to monster-chasing business as usual. Their only lead: Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a convicted pedophile priest who claims to have psychic visions. Scully’s outrage at his involvement leads her to a crisis of faith, while Mulder (and eventually the movie itself) has the stone-faced gall to encourage patience and sympathy for the sex offender. His visions eventually lead the duo to a Russian organ transporter running medical experiments to stitch together a new body for his ailing husband.
I Want to Believe Struggled as a Horror Movie
Even if I Want to Believe were a pristine thriller in the vein of Seven or Insomnia, its dour subject matter would still have sullied its chances against the competition: in the summer of 2008, the box office was dominated by crowd-pleasing juggernauts like Iron Man and The Dark Knight. But the movie is far from pristine. Its leaden pace makes it a chore for fans and newbies to withstand. Horror-wise, it lacks any monster-movie iconography or moments of unbearable dread. We’re a far cry from anything approaching the icky reveal of the sewer-dwelling Flukeman or the shiver-inducing antics of Satanic substitute teacher Miss Paddock.
I Want to Believe is devoid of the storytelling prowess, philosophical grit, stylistic innovation, and mordant humor that the show exuded at its peak. To top it all off, Carter populates the movie with bizarre directorial choices, including a moment in which Mulder gazes upon a framed photo of George W. Bush as the X-Files theme plays in the background, apropos of nothing. With its tonal muddle and meandering script, the movie was enough to make even the most dedicated fans question their belief in the franchise.
Chris Carter Returns to The X-Files
From 2016 to 2018, Carter revived the show for two seasons, which further served to frustrate longtime fans and newcomers with clunky creative choices. Since then, The X-Files has shown few promising signs of life, but it’s been awakened from the grave with recent news that Ryan Coogler, director of Sinners, is developing a reboot series. It appears that Carter has leveraged the newfound interest in the franchise to make this R-rated director’s cut a reality. But despite the writer-director’s claims that it’s gorier than the theatrical version, bloodthirsty horror fans are likely to shrug. The most notable additions of “gore” include a few new shots of dismembered body parts and headless corpses. These images feel more narratively functional than anything, dramatizing the “modern day Frankenstein” plot instead of just alluding to it in reams of expository dialogue.
How Vrach Frankenshteyn Improves the 2008 Movie
Crucially, though, the film feels tighter. It’s 7 minutes shorter than the original cut, and scenes are now edited at a more staccato, thriller-like pace. Much of what’s missing involves tender character moments between Mulder and Scully. Two of their smooches have been nixed, along with half of a scene that involves late-night cuddling between the paranormal-fixated paramours. References to the characters’ backstory have also gotten the chop, including nods to Mulder’s long-lost sister and Scully’s son she gave up for adoption. Mercifully, this new edit streamlines a tedious subplot involving a young boy whose dire illness Scully goes to great lengths to treat.
Mulder and Scully Remain the Film’s Greatest Strength
The slashing of these character-centric moments might sound ill-advised or even sacrilege to fans who believed Mulder and Scully’s potent onscreen chemistry was the only redeemable element from the theatrical cut. Surprisingly, it all works. Duchovny and Anderson do commendable work in conveying the pathos of all the heartache the duo has endured – their shared glances do more heavy-lifting than any of Carter and Spotnitz’s ham-fisted dialogue.
The X-Files Recut Still Has Major Problems
Still, all the recutting in the world can’t save the film from its inherent design flaws. Mulder and Scully are apart for far too long. Scully’s subplot with her young patient is a snooze, since it keeps her away from the X-File at hand. And that X-File is generic at best, homophobic at worst. The so-called “modern Frankenstein” wants to build a new body for his husband, whose connection to Father Joe plays into eyeroll-y stereotypes around trauma victims and queer people. In both 2008 and 2026, it all feels like something that would land on the reject pile in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit writers’ room.
Is Vrach Frankenshteyn Worth Watching?
While the original I Want to Believe is all but unwatchable, Vrach Frankenshteyn feels more like perfectly serviceable streaming fare. With Coogler’s much-anticipated reboot, many curious genre fans are checking out the show for the first time, working their way through all eleven seasons. If these newcomers wish to include I Want to Believe and the revival seasons in their binge-a-thon for sheer completists’ sake, they’d be well-advised to watch Vrach Frankenshteyn instead of the original: it’s a re-animated cinematic corpse that isn’t quite as beautiful as the Bride of Frankenstein, but it’s not quite dead-on-arrival either. If nothing else, at least it leaves that inexplicable George-W.-Bush-photo moment on the cutting room floor.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn is streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street has only committed one crime: premiering this late into the summer movie slate. Hot off the heels of The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one can only hope Oak Street won’t be lost in the noise of August’s bigger releases. Because those who go to see it will have the pleasure of witnessing one of the few movies this year to actually capture the feeling of those classic Hollywood blockbusters that made Steven Spielberg a household name. And indeed, it’s the blockbuster we’ve been waiting for.
What Is The End of Oak Street About?
The End of Oak Street follows the Platt family: mother Denise (Anne Hathaway), father Greg (Ewan McGregor), and kids Audrey and Brian (Maisy Stella, Christian Convery). Don’t forget their beloved dog, Starbuck (played by newcomer Brisket). Though they blend into their suburban confines as a typical family, turmoil bubbles as Denise and Greg’s strained marriage begins to take a toll on their children.
But soon, an even bigger problem begins to plague Oak Street. Mysterious flashes of light and sound that explode in the night, the largest of which culminates in the entire neighborhood being transported through time and space: from 1982 to the prehistoric era. As dinosaurs and other megafauna wreak havoc, hunting down the unprepared humans brought to their time, the Platt family struggles to figure out how they’ll stay alive and if they’ll even be able to find a way back home.
David Robert Mitchell’s Writing and Directing Make for A Certified Home Run
For those who have been starved for a truly great big-budget dinosaur film given the slow death of the Jurassic Park franchise, you really can’t ask for more than this. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell, the mind behind It Follows and Beneath the Silver Lake, has returned to mix sincere family-drama with a thrilling science fiction survival film. Oak Street blends a lot of heart into its gloomier aspects, at turns funny, dark, charming, and frightening. It runs the emotional gamut and keeps you pinned to your seat as Mitchell constructs a rich interior world for the Platt family that is grounded against the fantastic situation they’re thrust into.
They’re not revolutionary characters, not by a long shot. An emotionally distant father and a mother looking for purpose beyond a suffocating home life, rebellious kids who are impulsive and scared, it’s nothing new. The script writing isn’t bombastically clever. But it is incredibly compelling thanks to the naturalistic dialogue and on-screen chemistry between the four actors. The realistic struggles of the family, driven by phenomenal performances from Hathaway and McGregor first and foremost, balance against the more thrilling elements of the film and keep it from tipping over into mere spectacle.
80’s Suburbia Meets Cretaceous Terror in The End of Oak Street
When it zooms out from the family dilemma to indulge in that spectacle, though, it’s a visual feast and a half. Mitchell crafts an aesthetically luscious setting for the drama to take place in by melding 80’s suburbia with Cretaceous jungles. The blend of modern and primeval elements makes for a deadly and breathtaking environment, constructed with some incredible production design and wonderful digital effects.
Those effects never get old as we see the world beyond the block, and the same can be said for its numerous monstrous reptiles that populate it. Each new one the film pits the family against is more dangerous than the last, and they all look phenomenal. They have genuine weight and impact on screen, and if you even had to ask how, of course it’s Industrial Light & Magic doing their strongest cinema sorcery yet again.
Mitchell and Gioulakis Are On Their Photography A-Game
Mitchell and returning cinematographer Michael Gioulakis weave the camera through the neighborhood in a slick fashion, moving through buildings and yards deftly. They block every chase sequence and dinosaur encounter with immense style, resulting in some especially creative sequences. The locations feel purposeful, and the way the camera swoops and dives around is adventurous and legitimately energized. The dynamic camera work pairs with editing that’s snappy and perfectly paced, leaving just enough room to breathe between its exhilarating moments of prehistoric peril.
The End of Oak Street Is a Must-Watch Blockbuster
By its final scenes, Oak Street cements itself as a new favorite of the year. Big stars bringing bigger and more heartfelt performances, big budget effects that actually manage to wow you over and over, and a big entertainment value that reminds you of how even the simplest stories can generate a feeling of true adventure. The End of Oak Street is endlessly impressive and will revitalize even the most fatigued theatergoers this year.
