dvd review animated addams family barely raises an …
TRANSCRIPT
F10 | Sunday, January 12, 2020 siouxcityjournal.com
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BRUCE R. [email protected]
When you normalize the Add-ams family, you ruin the Addams family.
And that’s what happened in the animated venture that still bears the name, “The Addams Family.”
For a good third of the film, we get introductions, tours and slight parlor tricks before the plot shows up.
Then, a design guru named Margaux Needler (voiced by Al-lison Janney) realizes the Addams home is an eyesore for folks hop-ing to live in a planned commu-nity called Assimilation.
There’s supposed to be a huge outcry against folks who stand out but, quickly, residents real-ize the Addamses actually fit in. End of story.
Sure, there’s a subplot with Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) prep-ping for an Addams-level bar mitzvah but it never rises to a level of interest.
Instead, this is a lot of visual stuff that borrows heavily from the original TV series.
Needler – the new wild card – is both reality star and conniving entrepreneur.
You know directors Greg Tier-nan and Conrad Vernon are at-tempting to comment on some-thing but they don’t outwardly say it.
Instead, “The Addams Family” exists in a very gray world where
even Charles Addams’ humor is watered down.
Wednesday (nicely voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz) strikes up a friendship with Needler’s daughter and finds common ground.
There’s a good song about blending in and a lot of work for Thing to do.
But when Lurch starts playing pop tunes on the organ, you won-der if a committee didn’t throw out ideas just to see what might fit – or fill.
At the end of the show, there’s a sing-along to the TV theme show, but it’s so tacked on you don’t re-ally want to bother.
An animated “Addams Family” should have borrowed ideas from the original magazine cartoons and, perhaps, copied their look.
An early idea – to do this in stop-motion animation – might have been good, too.
But resembling umpteen films without a specific eye is like sit-ting through Popeye cartoons un-til you can get to “Scooby-Doo.” There’s no real pull.
Janney emerges as a good voice artist; Oscar Isaac is an OK Go-mez.
And Charlize Theron is never more than Charlize Theron as Morticia.
Rather than buy the franchise, producers should have insisted on a better premise. That, alone, could have given this two snaps up.
A&EDVD REVIEW
Animated ‘Addams Family’ barely raises an eyebrow
Above: From left, Charlize Theron as the voice of Morticia addams, Chloë Grace Moretz as the voice of Wednesday addams, Oscar Isaac as the voice of Gomez addams, Finn Wolfhard as the voice of Pugsley, and nick Kroll as the voice of uncle Fester in “The addams Family.” Left: Lurch and Thing play a duet in “The addams Family.”
MGM Photos
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — Ellis Marsalis, a New Orleans musical legend and patri-arch of one of the most fa-mous jazz families, is taking a retirement — of sorts.
He’s no longer doing the weekly gig he’s had for more than three decades.
Marsalis has performed at Snug Harbor on French-man Street every Friday for
more than 30 years. But the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported Wednesday that Marsalis told the club’s proprietor late last year it had become too exhausting to play his usual two 75-minute sets every Friday evening at the club, and he no longer wanted to do it.
The 85-year-old ended his three-decade run of
weekly shows at Snug Har-bor on Dec. 27 with two sold-out shows, the news-paper reported.
“We figured out that he’s had a regular night at Snug Harbor since the late 1980s,” Snug Harbor proprietor Jason Patterson told the newspaper. “That is a long time.”
Marsalis will continue to perform on occasion. He
intends to make about two monthly appearances at the club as a “special guest.” Other acts will sit in with him for 35 minutes per set.
Four of his six sons are musicians: Wynton, a trumpeter; Branford, a saxophonist; Delfeayo, a trombonist; and Jason, a drummer. And he’s helped nurture countless musicians over the years in various educational roles at Xavier University in New Orleans and the city’s elite arts high school, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
Some of his students in-clude trumpeter and com-poser Terence Blanchard; pianist and vocalist Harry Connick Jr.; saxophonists Donald Harrison and Victor Goines; and bassist Regi-nald Veal.
Jazz legend Ellis Marsalis plans to retire from regular gig
GERALD HERBERT, ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this May 5, 2013, photo, jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis performs at the new Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in new Orleans. Marsalis, a jazz legend and patriarch of the Marsalis family, is stepping down from the weekly Friday night show he’s done for about three decades at Snug Harbor in new Orleans. The 85-year-old Marsalis will still perform on occasion at the club along with other artists.
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