However, as is the case most years, there were some real stinkers too – looking at you Lego Movie 2. That film was bad, but it doesn’t hold a candle to this year’s winner of the Snowie for worst animation. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Addams Family.
Directed by Sausage Party (2016) pair Veron & Tiernan, this utter insult to the memory of Charles Addams could and should have been so, so much better.
What made the original Addams Family TV series of the 60s and the early 90s films so enjoyable was they played up to the dark, yet family-friendly humour. They played the morbid for laughs but at the heart of the story is a family who love each other and have to overcome some kind of threat to their way of life.
The 2019 version does away with all of that and replaces it with ‘Look at the weird Goths acting all Gothy’. The jokes fall flat, the voice performers are badly miscast– I love Oscar Isaac, but his voice as Gomez Addams is terrible – and the plot is paper thin. But the biggest problem with this film, and why it is the winner of worst animated film of the year, is its animation style.
The Addams Family tone and aesthetic could be made to work with pretty much any other type of animation. Ideally of course MGM should have called up misters Selick or Burton, but failing that, brought in someone with a similar vision who could have brought Americas favourite Goth family to life. What we got instead was something garishly bright, cheap-looking and flat.
Undoubtably, the biggest missed opportunity of the year.
