Addams Family Double Feature Review

Addams Family Double Feature Review                                                                                          10-13-19

Warning! Both of these movies are rated PG-13, so single-digit kids shouldn’t be reading this!

Based on the cartoon characters created by Charles Addams, The Addams Family is about a creepy and peculiar family known as the Addams. Father Gomez is sad that he hasn’t seen his brother Fester in years. Gomez’s lawyer Tully Alford is having financial troubles, but when he discovers that the Addams secretly have a stash of doubloons in their house, he proposes that Gordon, adopted son of Abigail Craven (whom Tully owes money to), to dress up as Fester to steal the Addams’s stash. However, the more Gordon spends time with the Addams, the more he slowly attaches to them and their culture.

While the sets are nice and the acting is top-notch, the story is too confusing to follow.

In Addams Family Values, Morticia gives birth to a healthy baby boy named Pubert. However, Wednesday and Pugsley are jealous of Pubert, so they try to kill him. Gomez and Morticia of course don’t approve of this, so they hire a nanny named Debbie Jellinsky to take care of the kids, and she suggests that Wednesday and Pugsley should go to summer camp. Little does anyone know that Debbie is secretly a serial killer, and she plans on wooing and marrying Fester just so she can kill him!

Addams Family Values is one of the few sequels that improves upon the original with a superior story, life-like sets and backgrounds, and talented acting from A-list actors.

If I were to complain about one thing, I would say that some of the returning characters, like Thing the disembodied hand, don’t have as much screen time as in the original film. However, I still enjoyed Addams Family Values more than I thought.

Wednesday Addams unfortunately has to participate in a play inspired by the first Thanksgiving, despite it being the summer. She plays the role of Pocahontas, who didn't even appear at the first Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, the film tanked at the box-office: Addams Family Values had to compete against The Nightmare before Christmas, Schindler's List, and Mrs. Doubtfire. Let's hope that Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan's Addams Family does better at the box-office. It's main competition won't be Frozen 2, but Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil.

Addams Family rating- 3 stars out of 5.

Addams Family Values rating- 3.45 stars out of 5.
For those parents at home reading this review, here are links to reviews of both Addams Family movies below.
Addams Family
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/the-addams-family-1991
Addams Family Values
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/addams-family-values

My Thoughts on the Live-Action Disney Remakes (Excluding Lion King)

Hi, everybody! Today, as I promised in my 'Dora' review, I will talk about every live-action Disney remake leading up to Aladdin. Most of what I'm going to say today I have said in this link below.
https://asateriale.blogspot.com/2017/03/movie-review-beauty-and-beast-2017-part.html
Anyway, let's go over the nine Disney remakes over the years!

This whole craze of live-action Disney remakes began in 2010, with Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Despite receiving very mixed reviews, the film earned over a billion dollars worldwide! While I don't hate it like other people do, I find it crazy that it earned so much money at the box-office. I have yet to see the sequel, and I don't plan to in the near future.

The next live-action Disney remake was Maleficent, released in 2014, starring Angelina Jolie as the famous wicked sorceress. It was meant to tell the story of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty through the eyes of Maleficent, as well as how she became evil. Instead, we got a mess of a film in which Maleficent is the hero and King Stephan (Aurora's father) is the villain. To make matters worse, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, the Three Good Fairies in the original film, were demoted to female equivalents of The Three Stooges.

The third live-action Disney remake was Cinderella, released in 2015. It stuck faithfully to both the Disney and Charles Perrault versions of the fairytale, and added a deeper backstory to Cinderella (whose real name is Ella this time around). When I first saw this film in theaters, it was right after one of the most insane ideas ever for a crossover episode: Steven Universe's 'Say Uncle', a crossover episode of Steven Universe and Uncle Grandpa. What's next? A crossover episode of Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Pickle & Peanut? Or a crossover episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the CGI turtles) and Fanboy & Chum-Chum?

The fourth live-action Disney remake was The Jungle Book, released in 2016. It had a young boy, Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli in this version, in a CGI jungle with hyper-realistic CG animals voiced by celebrities like Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Walken, Idris Elba, and Scarlett Johansen. Only two of the songs from the original film returned: 'The Bare Necessities' and 'I Wanna Be Like You'. It's a very enjoyable film, but I feel sad that the vultures, nor Shanti, the human girl Mowgli falls in love with at the end of the original film, don't return. However, director Jon Favreau stated in the audio commentary that he didn't like the ending of the original Jungle Book, so he decided to make a new ending with Mowgli staying in the jungle and becoming more mature.

Also released in 2016 was Pete's Dragon, based on the 1977 film of the same name. I actually talked about this film back in August 2016, and I think it's a near-perfect live-action family film.

http://asateriale.blogspot.com/2016/08/movie-review-petes-dragon-2016.html

In 2017, the tale as old as time became new again with the billion-dollar winning Beauty and the Beast. The reason why this movie exists was to 'improve' on the original film and 'fix the plot-holes'. There are many changes to the original film, such as the household objects getting unappealing character designs, some of the songs being expanded, Prince Adam receiving a book that could teleport him anywhere in the world, and the enchantress who was mentioned in the original film physically appearing. I personally don't like this movie as much as other people do because I felt that a lot of the humor has been drained out of the original film, and Emma Wattson's singing voice can get on your nerves.
I also find the book to be pointless: The only reason it exists is so Belle can find out why her mother died. Adam could've used it to escape from his castle when it starts falling apart!


The following year, Disney released Christopher Robin, based on the beloved Winnie the Pooh stories by A A Milne. I actually reviewed this movie last year, and looking back, I feel I was a little too generous on it. As Rachel said in her review...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpAXl3ZPT3I

Christopher Robin was a bit of a jerk. She also points out that it would've been better if the film had more whimsy and wasn't as depressing. I would've rewritten the script to make Christopher a more likable character.

As for what I think of Christopher Robin, it's okay, but if you really want a live-action Winnie the Pooh, I recommend the preschool series The Book of Pooh. It aired on Playhouse Disney (a predecessor to Disney Junior) between 2001 and 2003, and faithfully stuck to the source material while teaching very young kids important lessons on friendship with Henson-quality puppets. Quite a few episodes of The Book of Pooh can be found on YouTube.

The little blue bird on Rabbit's hand is Kessie, who originally appeared in an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Before I talk about the next film, here's my review of Christopher Robin from last year.

https://asateriale.blogspot.com/2018/08/movie-review-christopher-robin.html

There were three live-action Disney remakes released this year, two of which I will talk about: The first was Tim Burton’s Dumbo. As well as avoiding the usual Tim Burton art style, this retelling of Dumbo also has a bit of a different story from the original, somewhat similar to Free Willy. Also, the animal characters don’t talk, so characters like Timothy Mouse, Mr. Stork, the Nanny Elephants, and the Crows got removed. Instead, Dumbo is guided by human children Milly and Joe Farrier and their widowed father Holt. Unfortunately, Tim Burton’s Dumbo didn’t meet box-office expectations, perhaps because it had to compete against How To Train Your Dragon 3 and Avengers: End Game.

As for what I thought of the movie, I liked it more than Maleficent and Beauty and the Beast, but less than The Jungle Book and Pete's Dragon.

Aladdin, on the other hand, proved to be very successful, earning over a billion dollars at the box-office and even green lighting a sequel. Some of the changes that were made to this film include Jafar not only being power-hungry, but also war hungry, Jasmine having a song that has little impact on the story, Iago (Jafar’s parrot) behaving more like a real parrot, and Genie being played by Will Smith instead of Robin Williams, with mixed results.

Unfortunately, the film itself is less engaging and less enjoyable than its 1992 counterpart. Much like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin drained much of the humor and charm out of the original film. It also hurts that Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, screenwriters of the original film, don’t return, despite working on the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Of all the remakes talked about here, the only ones here that I truly recommend are Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and Pete's Dragon. As for the rest, it's all up to you.

If you're wondering about what I thought of Jon Favreau's The Lion King, I will review it some time in January.