The Addamses might look, talk and act darker and weirder than most, but what makes them the weirdest is they’re a loving, tight-knit family. This is all par for the Addams course, so what new territory can be wrought here? There are some supernatural liberties that can be taken, for sure, in this computer animated format, but the core beliefs are in place. The new animated “Addams Family” brings the characters back to their cartoon roots. Movies Spooky, kooky - and beloved: Why they can’t kill the ‘Addams Family’ The animated figures hew closely to Addams’ cartoons, imparted in the dry, deadpan, punny wordplay integral to the Addams appeal.

Since Morticia’s 1938 debut on the pages of the New Yorker, in a cartoon drawn by Charles Addams, the unusual family has appeared in virtually every possible format: a 1960s TV series (thanks to that catchy theme song by Vic Mizzy), two animated series, two wildly popular 1990s feature films, a Broadway musical, video games and now, an animated feature directed by “Sausage Party” helmers Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, and written by Matt Lieberman, Pamela Pettler and Erica Rivinoja.įormer New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff said in a 2010 interview that Addams’ work “delighted in turning upside down our assumptions about normality and its relationship to good and evil.” That is the underlying thesis of this “Addams Family,” which isn’t a new take so much as a deeply faithful rendering of Addams’ cartoons, in style and content. With only four notes and a couple of snaps, plus a classic black dress, one can instantly evoke the classic American Gothic clan, who are creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. The enduring appeal of “The Addams Family” is quite impressive.

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