Don't get me wrong, I've always enjoyed these two films (note I said two, I don't consider that tv movie to be part of the films series), but watching them today I was reminded about how funny they actually are. It's not that I'm hard to please, but usually I'll see something funny and laugh out of instinct, like I saw a funny thing happen so I'll make myself laugh. We all do it.
Not so here. What really helps sell these films is the cast. Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd and Christina Ricci are all so perfectly cast and inhibit their characters, at times it's easy to forget that I'm watching Lloyd, or Julia, etc. and just get caught up in the scene.
With that said, neither film is perfect, the first one revolves around Fester and his amnesia, which feels like a cheat. At least when I first saw it I was upset that we finally get a film of these characters and the first film is spent with a fake Fester (well, till the end, but you know...)
The second film is much funner, but it suffers from having too many plotlines going on at once. We jump from each situation so often it's hard to really get a feeling for each storyline. It comes off like a series of skits, we get a set up and then a punch line, then bam off to the next scene. Fortunately this works for the most part, and the film is still enjoyable, thanks largely to (as mentioned above) the cast.
Raul Julia's untimely passing killed any chance of a third film happening. Had things been different, I would have loved to have seen a third film, this cast really deserved it. But without Julia it was a wise move to end the series.
Now I hear Tim Burton is working on a stop motion remake of The Addams Family. I suppose that has the potential to be good, but in my mind nothing is going to top the cast of these two films.
Not so here. What really helps sell these films is the cast. Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd and Christina Ricci are all so perfectly cast and inhibit their characters, at times it's easy to forget that I'm watching Lloyd, or Julia, etc. and just get caught up in the scene.
With that said, neither film is perfect, the first one revolves around Fester and his amnesia, which feels like a cheat. At least when I first saw it I was upset that we finally get a film of these characters and the first film is spent with a fake Fester (well, till the end, but you know...)
The second film is much funner, but it suffers from having too many plotlines going on at once. We jump from each situation so often it's hard to really get a feeling for each storyline. It comes off like a series of skits, we get a set up and then a punch line, then bam off to the next scene. Fortunately this works for the most part, and the film is still enjoyable, thanks largely to (as mentioned above) the cast.
Raul Julia's untimely passing killed any chance of a third film happening. Had things been different, I would have loved to have seen a third film, this cast really deserved it. But without Julia it was a wise move to end the series.
Now I hear Tim Burton is working on a stop motion remake of The Addams Family. I suppose that has the potential to be good, but in my mind nothing is going to top the cast of these two films.
.
