Story
This adaptation of The Addams family begins with the wedding of a young Morticia (voice of Charlize Theron) and Gomez, somewhere in eastern Europe. When angry townsfolk crash the wedding, Gomez (voice of Oscar Isaac) promises to find a place where he and Morticia can live in peace and safety without worrying about people who don’t understand their values or way of life. They set off and when their car accidentally hits Lurch (voice of Conrad Vernon), he leads them to a haunted and derelict insane asylum. The couple are pleased to learn that it’s both deserted and isolated, so they decide to make it their family home.
For 13 years Gomez and Morticia live with their children Wednesday (voice of Chloe Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (voice of Finn Wolfhard) in misty seclusion in their asylum at the top of a hill. Daughter Wednesday longs to know what lies beyond their front gates. When Margaux Needler (voice of Allison Janney), a reality TV show renovator, revamps the town at the base of the hill, she drains the swamp and clears the mist that has hidden the Addams’ house from view. Margaux is also determined to renovate the Addams’ home to maintain the value of her redevelopment. But her plans go awry. When the rest of the Addams family, including Cousin It (voice of Snoop Dogg) and Uncle Fester (voice of Nick Kroll), arrive to celebrate Pugsley’s coming of age, she decides to turn the whole town against them.
Ultimately the children must show the adults that sometimes our greatest strength lies in our differences.
Themes
Death; extreme sibling conflict; spying; stealing and cheating; risky behaviour; rebellion; strategic use of weapons; bullying; pitfalls of social media
Violence
The Addams Family has some violence. For example:
- Violent mobs with pitchforks and flaming torches crash Morticia and Gomez’s wedding. There is sword fighting. A flaming boulder destroys a bridge before the wedding party flees.
- Pugsley experiments with a rocket ship. It explodes out of the house, nearly kills his father twice, and almost crashes into the house before exploding into the sky while Pugsley falls through the greenhouse roof uninjured.
- Wednesday wears her hair in two noose braids. She buries her brother alive and tries to end his life in many other ways.
- Pugsley throws knives at his sister.
- Wednesday sleeps in a guillotine with a blade balanced over her neck. A tree branch pulls her out of the window to wake her up just before the guillotine slices down.
- A school bully puts a rancid sandwich and soda into another girl’s bag. Wednesday is supposed to be dissecting frogs, but she creates hundreds of Frankenstein frogs and sets them all on the bully.
- Wednesday beheads a doll, puts knives into an electrical socket, and sets fire to a tree with a magnifying glass.
- Cannonballs blast through the Addams’ mansion and Pugsley shows his skill in detonating explosives when his family is attacked by the townspeople. The house is left in ruins.
Sexual references
The Addams Family has some sexual references. For example:
- When Gomez’s mother comes to visit, she becomes infatuated with Lurch. She says to Morticia, ‘When you’re done with Fabio send him up to my room …’. She gives him a suggestive look and he rolls his eyes.
- The word ‘pimp’ is used in a Snoop Dogg song that plays as Cousin It arrives at the house.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
The Addams Family shows some use of substances. For example, the family has a wedding tradition that involves putting lime into a coconut and drinking it to seal the marriage ceremony. It’s unclear whether alcohol is part of the drink.
Nudity and sexual activity
The Addams Family has some nudity and sexual activity. For example:
- Gomez and Morticia are passionately in love. They kiss and embrace in many scenes. Some scenes show them slow dancing.
- Uncle Fester is blown out of the bathroom while taking a bath. He lands in the middle of the living room still in the tub. Nudity is implied, but we see only his bare chest.
Product placement
There’s no official product placement in The Addams Family, but off-screen merchandise is available online and in some shops.
Coarse language
The Addams Family has a lot of name-calling and insults, including ‘monsters’, ‘freak’, ‘weirdo’, ‘ghoul’ and ‘lemmings’.
Ideas to discuss with your children
The Addams Family is a macabre animation. Although the movie isn’t particularly creepy, there are several creepy scenes and some potentially influential and dangerous messages to be aware of. Because of this, the movie is best enjoyed by older children and slightly more mature audiences.
The main messages from this movie are to be true to yourself and to develop personal talents even when they don’t conform to accepted conventions and ideas of ‘normality’.
Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include empathy, unconditional love, teamwork, friendship, acceptance, tolerance and understanding of differences.
This movie could also give you the chance to talk with your children about real-life actions and consequences. For example, you could talk about what would happen in real life if you:
- shoot people with arrows or try to stab them with knives
- play with weapons and explosives
- spy on others
- start rumours on social media
- try out violent and potentially life-threatening tricks on siblings.
Also, the movie also sends some very questionable messages. For example, it suggests that robbery and cheating are both OK, as long as you don’t get caught. You might want to talk this through with your children.