Day: October 21, 2019

When I first heard that Oscar Isaac was set to play Gomez Adams, I was ecstatic. Perfect! I love it! Let’s do it! Probably one of the best actors who could play him after Raul Julia did it in the early 90’s!

And then they announced it was actually an animated movie and he was just doing voice work.

Ohhhh….boo. What a waste. Anyone can be Gomez in terms of voice acting. That almost seems to imply that if they eventually do a live action one in the next decade, they probably won’t pick Oscar Isaac for it now. And life is disappointing.

Not off to a good start, The Addams Family animated movie.

But thanks for focusing on making sure Morticia was boob focused most of the film?

Not wanting to start with our house of weirdos, this film starts with the marriage of Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) in a likely eastern European village. But alas, their families are labeled freaks and they are chased out of town by torches and saved by Fester (Nick Kroll). They decide to start their family far away, somewhere no one will find them and disgusting. An abandoned mental asylum they find in New Jersey!

Now thirteen years later, they are loving their mountain top paradise, surrounded by swamps, raising their kids Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) and their man servant Lurch (Conrad Vernon).

Things are happening quickly though. Pugsley has his mamushka coming up to prove to all of his family he can protect them with a sword so all of the extended family is coming.

And then? The fog disappears! It turns out someone drained the swamp and put up a perfect community below the mountain. A perfect city with perfect citizens called Assimilation, that Margaux Needler (Allison Janney) is fixing together to sell as part of some reality show. And this sudden big scary castle on the mountain is not going to help her one bit.

Also featuring Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler, Titus Burgess, and Elsie Fisher.

Oh and Wednesday joins public school and becomes a trend setter.

Giving us a prologue for The Addams Family it turns out is completely unnecessary. Is it cute? Sure. But it also tells us their house is an asylum, not a MUSEUM, which is not only in the old theme song, but literally that theme song is used in this movie as well. Unacceptable.

This Addams Family cartoon didn’t go far enough. Enough in like, any direction. They didn’t have too much shocking or spooky or weird, as a lot of it is just replaced with explosions, from bombs and boulders.It was just very tame. And in terms of humor, actual good jokes were few and far in between. I watched it with a very full theater with a lot of kids, and rarely were there chuckles.

This is a film that is played way too safe. I am not saying they need extreme dark humor, or to make it not family friendly. They just didn’t do really anything with this large and interesting cast of characters. Gomez is a bitch. Morticia doesn’t really do much at all. Pugsley and Wednesday look a bit too weird and don’t feel like real characters.

Come on Oscar Isaac. Demand a reboot with you playing the live action lead now.

I was not looking forward to Abominable. We all know about Doppelganger films, and it can feel very awkward, but usually the films involved at least come out a few months apart.

Instead this time we got three, and it took almost a whole year. I mean that literally. Smallfoot came out Sept 28, 2018. We had Missing Link come out April 9, 2019, about a very similar topic, but different, sure. And now we have Abominable, coming out Sept 27, 2019. That is literally a year later on the same Friday as Smallfoot!

How many large humanoid animated films do we actually want? Because I assure you, when Smallfoot came out I did not care to see it at all, but despite that ended up liking it. When Missing Link was announced, it felt like such a lame film compared to their last one, Kubo and the Two Strings.

Given this, to me, Abominable just feels dead on arrival, and I can’t even tell you if they tried to advertise this one.

Hopefully they aren’t dead on arrival on this train. That’d be graphic.

Yi (voiced by the very white Chloe Bennet), lives in what I assume is Hong Kong and has her own tragic story. Her father passed away at some point recently, living her to just live with her mom (Michelle Wong) and Nai Nai (Tsai Chin). She has decided to keep busy this summer, working odd jobs all day for money to save up. She has plans to travel around China, to the sites her dad promised to take her.

And nearby, in some crazy secure facility, a yeti escapes! It was owned by Burnish (Eddie Izzard), a rich man who wants to prove to the world that yetis exist, and has spent his life trying to catch one to prove. He has a head zoologist, Dr. Zara (Sarah Paulson), who wants to just protect these endangered animals.

Either way! Yeti escapes, finds itself on Yi’s roof, and they bond! Yi is determined to help get him out of the city from the scary helicopters. And maybe she will just join him along the way.

Also starring the voices of Albert Tsai, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, and Joseph Izzo.

How many kids could that thing fit in its mouth?

Abominable is not giving us a story we haven’t already seen before. And no, I am not talking about yetis this time.

Youth finds magical creature and has to hide it from those looking to kill it/capture it. Somehow with gumption, luck, and magic, they are able to save the creature and get it home. Ho hum. A lack of originality is not the problem with this movie. Its the lazy writing.

In this movie, the yeti has nature magic. What does that mean? Well, it starts with just can grow things fast. And then becomes whatever the hell they want it to be. It gets “stronger” the closer he is to home, and basically, if they are ever in danger, he can use the magic and the creators write some way to advance the plot. Over and over and over. That’s really shit.

And you know what? I won’t even get into the Chinese propaganda in this movie. There are enough articles online and I am not an expert enough to bring it up and explain it, so it has no effect on the review, but it sounds really shitty.

Definitely a skippable movie.