There are many super brands in horror: a murderous doll, a possessed girl who spins her head 360 degrees, and an ex-baker’s boy who puts on a hockey mask and murders all the instructors. But perhaps the oldest brand (apart from classic monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein), even if they were always funnier than scary, is the Addams family, who started out in short comic strips published in the New Yorker starting in the late 1930s, and went on to a TV series and from there to movies , series, computer games and even a musical version. So what wonder they are getting a Netflix series? Well, at least one of them is getting a Netflix series.
The series, created by Tim Burton (who at the time gave up the opportunity to direct the popular films starring them in the early 1990s because he was too busy with “Batman”, and they passed into the hands of Barry Sonnenfeld) focuses on Wednesday Adams (Jenna Ortega), a girl A 15 year old who enjoys everything that a teenage girl shouldn’t enjoy, which is mainly causing suffering to strangers. Following her latest entanglement (the release of piranha fish in the school’s swimming pool) Wednesday is expelled and her parents decide to send her to Wormmore Academy. At a basic level, Wormmore runs on the same principles as Hogwarts/X-Men Academy/Sabrina’s School of Witchcraft: a school for outcasts where they live and learn. The rebellious Wednesday isn’t ready to stay there, but an ancient mystery draws her deep into the dark secrets that lie at the heart of the school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q73UhUTs6y0
Ortega is perfect casting for the morbid girl. She manages to maintain excellent comic timing throughout the series and somehow hold the series on her thin shoulders, while maintaining a completely serious face – while the rest of the family is pushed to the margins and only appears in a few episodes (but when it happens it’s not really satisfying). Gomez Adams is played by Luis Guzman, who, despite his many comedic roles, is better known for the series “Narcos”, and Morticia is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Unfortunately, Gomez does not live up to expectations: he is not the hopeless romantic that we know from previous incarnations of Gomez and even though he is married to Morticia, he constantly seems to spit on her. Even though it is a serious mistake in relation to the family, there is nothing to worry too much about, since the family, as mentioned, was pushed to the side in favor of Wednesday.
But it is also expressed in the secondary characters in Normore. Wednesday’s roommate, for example, is a werewolf who sounds like she’s speaking from the throat of a 64-year-old white man who hasn’t met a teenager since he was one himself. The result is a hyperactive and annoying girl who talks about every subject as if it is the most important thing in her life. Although very specific to the character, in practice the dialogues with her are one of the cringiest things that appeared on Netflix Since the dialogues of “Resident Evil”. It’s not like that only with her: in general, the dialogues in the series are the Achilles’ heel here. Wednesday itself is interesting and Tim Burton and his team of writers built a good story here, but because of the flawed dialogues the viewers miss the most enjoyable part of the Addams family – the encounters with everyone outside the family. Most of the humor in “The Addams Family” over the years was when normal people arrived at the family home and had to face the twisted reality in which the family lived. The best parts of “Wednesday” are when Wednesday is alone or with Thing, the amputated hand that serves as a kind of family pet, and is actually her only family connection during the first year at the academy – precisely because the “external” characters, which are actually To remind us how strange this family is, just striped.
In the end, “Wednesday” is a youth series that does what “Riverdale” and “Sabrina” did: takes a well-known brand, turns it into a high school (okay, boarding school) youth series and expects the formula to work. It worked in the first season of “Riverdale” and also in the first season of “Sabrina”, but both series exhausted themselves very quickly. Is “Wednesday” a series with a future? It’s hard to know. There are strong things here: the skeleton of the story is well constructed, Jenna Ortega is excellent in the main role and has moments that are wonderfully filmed (for example, Wednesday plays the cello while the fountain next to her catches fire and everyone runs away) but the dialogue is lazy, all the characters except Wednesday are not believable and especially The DNA of the “Addams Family” is missing here. So yes, this is a good series for Netflix. But this is a pretty bad series for The Addams Family.