Addams Family CG Movie

[Ben]

How does this compare to the live-actioners, specifically the first one?

[Randall]

For me, on par. (We did watch the first live action one in October, so it is fresh in my memory.) I might say I laughed more at the animated film, where some of the craziness was more at home in the cartoon medium.

[James]

I'm not trying to redefine the actual definition of immigrants. I'm just saying IF there was an actual immigrant dynamic in the story to be had, it would really be the townsfolk moving to land that butted up against land the Addams had lived on for over a decade. (Pretty sure it was a new town since that TV host got to name it and was trying to recruit "settlers"!) That's why it felt shoehorned in. If you want to do an Addams immigrant story, it's easy: have them try to move into an established, populated area.

I even checked Wikipedia's synopsis to make sure I wasn't forgetting some major running theme, and in nine paragraphs nothing is mentioned about it. I'm not saying there is nothing in the film, just pointing out if you can describe the plot over nine paragraphs and not mention this it must not have been that important a detail to the plot.

It really seems like the host was just a control freak, who wanted everything her way. And when she didn't get it, made up lies about the Addams to turn people against them. It's not that they were foreign that people didn't like, it was the terrible things they thought their neighbors (who the host was pretending to be on social media) were experiencing.

This felt like the same old usual "townsfolk trying to run off monsters" storyline you see a lot in monster movies (with the twist that the townsfolk seemed fine with them until the host made us stuff about them), then some executive midway through said, "hey, they're kinda like refugees" so the writer added in a line or two.

That said, I did like it. (Gave it a 7 for fun!) The immigrant thing was just a throwaway bit never really explored I felt, which is a good thing because it probably would have dragged it down if they had taken it seriously!

[Randall]

The very first scene has them being chased out of Europe on the night of their wedding, and deciding for a new start in New Jersey (though Gomez chose it because it was the worst place in the USA!). It was a refugee story from the very start. Having the town cropping up later may muddle it a bit, but it is still about the town eventualy embracing the weird European family in the end.

[gaastra]

Poster.

[Ben]

They should open this on a Wednesday.

GEDDIT!?!!??!!??????

[Daniel]

Bill Hader will be voicing a new character and Javon Walton will assume the role of Pugsley.

[Dacey]

And now MGM is looking to sell its entire library...

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/ ... and-studio

[Ben]

Actually the whole "studio", not just the library. Money's on Apple to buy.

[James]

If Apple wants it, it's theirs. They have a massive cash horde.

[EricJ]

It'll cripple the entire streaming industry to have someone actually OWN out-of-copyright MGM,United Artists and Orion titles, and not show the Bill & Ted movies for free.
And I'm not sure about Apple, either, since I'd rather have them in the hands of someone who still makes discs--Fortunately, the third-party labels have pretty well exhausted all three catalogs, so even if Apple did decide to get into Blu-ray (which is not why they're interested), it would be a double-dip anyway.

Back to the actual subject of the movie, however:
======
Caught this on Prime, where it ended up sooner than usual for a Sony/MGM--It actually wasn't bad, although I was comparing it to what Tim Burton/Bryan Singer originally wanted to do with it, or the PC-agenda horror of "Addams Family Values".
Here, it's surprisingly cute and faithful to the original TV series--even duplicating the classic TV opening shot-for-shot in the end credits --and thankfully doesn't seem to have time to do all the other "PC Wednesday vs. Evil Normie" plot a modern Addams reboot taking all its source from the 90's Barry Sonnenfeld movies would do.
They bring one on for show, but don't have much time to do anything with it before speeding their way to the climax. (For ex., there's a scene of Wednesday starting junior high, so that the writers can intentionally homage "Mean Girls", and then we...never hear about it again. )

And yes, Nick Kroll absolutely aces the character of Uncle Fester, which is not always as easy to do as it sounds.

[Ben]

None of the library is out of copyright.

Addams is currently on Netflix in the UK; must try and catch it!

[EricJ]

None of the library is out of copyright.

Oh, NOOOO....'Course not!
It's just a nostalgia kick for every streaming service on the planet to run the entire UA canon of 007 movies, Pink Panthers and 80's Woody Allen!
(And Orion's Silence of the Lambs and Dances With Wolves never get old!)

Um, you do know the reason this movie was MADE (apart from cleaning up Tim Burton's lapsed project) was MGM trying to dig its way out of its own hole with new reboots of old existing intellectual properties?
Or, would you like to come up with another explanation for that looney "Child's Play" remake?

[Ben]

I don’t actually understand either paragraph above, but here’s a go...

Any streaming service can’t run titles without having a license from the copyright holder, in this case MGM. So they obviously have those rights.

As with any studio (hello Sony!), known brands and properties power the bottom line thesedays. Of course MGM is going to take a look at their inventory and see what might make commercial sense in rebooting and remaking, hence RoboCop, Rocky/Creed, and the ones you mentioned among others.

Yes, years of mismanagement, and continually changing management, has left MGM weak, so they are more desperate to find something — anything — that might launch a franchise outside of the Bonds, which they only half own anyway. But none of that is anything new, and I’m still lost on your copyright angle...

[EricJ]

I don’t actually understand either paragraph above, but here’s a go...
Any streaming service can’t run titles without having a license from the copyright holder, in this case MGM. So they obviously have those rights.

And, in the case of Orion, last held by MGM/UA--and the four or five defunct B-distribution companies like Golan/Globus and Amer.Int'l, whose catalogs a rebooted Orion bought up--if there IS no currently solvent copyright holder, the movies are up for grabs by any streaming service that wants to show something else besides real public-domain colorized prints of Night of the Living Dead.
And as you may have noticed, there are a lot of hungry studio-unattached streaming services lately.

MGM as we knew them went bankrupt in the 00's, and has only recently in the 10's been trying to dig their way back into capital profit with crappy remakes of their old free existing properties (Robocop, Total Recall, Clash of the Titans and Rollerball, anyone?), but that also means that the copyright holdings for 70's-90's MGM, 60's-80's United Artists (ie. the Panthers, Woodys and 007's up to Pierce Brosnan), and 90's Orion is...a LOT easier to get hold of lately than Fox or Warner's.

More to the point: The old 60's Addams TV series is one of those MGM properties, which is why you currently can't swing a cat in any direction on streaming and not hit one of the episodes.