The offbeat, swirly, Gothic-lite, snow-filled reign of Tim Burton will never let up. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, Universal’s Illumination Entertainment has snagged the rights to Charles Addams’ original The Addams Family cartoons with an eye to letting Burton direct a stop-motion feature out of them. Why yes, the term “3D” is also being tossed around. Yay.
I love The Addams Family. I was unhealthy obsessed with the Barry Sonnenfeld film as a pre-teen, and I used to hang out at the bookstore reading the original cartoon collections. It was the closest I got to becoming a Goth. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of Burton films over the years, I’m not sure I want to see the Addams sent through The Burton Factory, and made out to be a family with a penchant for swirls and black and white stripes.
DHD notes that Burton will ignore the previous films and television show, and return straight to the source. Apparently, he’s quite drawn to the sharp wit of the original comics. And they are funny. Much funnier than Burton’s Addams imitation, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy which is just kind of gross and painful to read.
But Burton used to have a knack for ghoulish humor in the Beetlejuice days. I daresay it even approached Charles Addams at times, and it would be nice if he could recapture that. But even good gallows humor can get lost in Burton’s tired and convoluted style. I feel like I can already see this, right down to Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp voicing Morticia and Gomez. No film should be that obvious (or should I say black and white) when the ink is still drying on the contracts.
