The Addams Family review: Cartoon movie could have been written by a monkey

It's creaky and it’s clunky, jokes smell a little funky, coulda been written by a monkey, The Addams Family.

The snappy theme tune, with the original lyrics, only appears at the end of this star-studded kids’ animation.

As it’s the best thing about it, I suppose at least the film goes out on a high.

Although I doubt parents who fondly remember the 90s movies or 60s sitcom will think it was worth the wait.

For the previous 80-odd minutes, they have been hit with a barrage of lame puns and force-fed syrupy modern messages about the importance of diversity and the dangers of online bullying.

Morticia (voiced by Charlize Theron), Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and their kids Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard) are holed up in a mansion on a hill in New Jersey.

As the extended family – Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll), Cousin It (Snoop Dogg) and Grandma (Bette Midler) – arrive to celebrate Pugsley’s “mazurka” (a sabre-wielding version of a bar mitzvah), a pastel-coloured new town called Assimilation opens in the valley below.

This is the brainchild of TV property show host Margaux Needler (Allison Janney) who looks on the Addams’ pile as a ghoulish blot on the landscape.

When the Addams rebuff her offer of a Changing Rooms style makeover she uses online fake news to whip townsfolk into a torch-flaming frenzy.

Meanwhile, to her horror, her androgynous kid Parker (Elsie Fisher) is getting a gothic makeover and learning to be themself with help from bowling-pin-headed pal Wednesday.

There are a couple of mildly amusing visual gags – kids will like the idea of dusting with a vaccum cleaner set in reverse – but the script is far from a scream.

And when the film led us into the Addams’ basement just to crack a gag about a “whine cellar”, I found myself yearning for Adam Sandler and Hotel Transylvania 4.

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