Incredibly Pretty but Horribly Silly

A tuba farts along in the background as a hyperbolically dumb character lazily spouts the line, “Sure made his life harder than it had to be, with a name like Uranus,” a piece of writing which is literally followed by a slide whistle on the soundtrack. Believe it or not, this is the new Rob Zombie film, and this kind of bad is as good as it gets. Yes, the director who disturbed countless viewers and enthralled gore-hounds with his nasty, trashy tributes to exploitation horror films has now made perhaps the silliest, stupidest comedy movie of the year, The Munsters.

Technically, a review for the film could simply consist of the acronym ‘WTF,’ which was the consistent response from many Zombie fans when the true trailer for the film was released. But the obvious effort and care that went into The Munsters is deserving of a more thoughtful response, and also why the film feels like such a tragedy — Zombie, his cast, and the film’s crew are entirely committed and seem to deeply care for not just the source material but for their shared vision. There’s a lot of tender love and care that went into producing The Munsters (and the meticulous attention to visual detail is the only great result), but the end product proves that sometimes love is not enough.

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Universal / Netflix

The Munsters was of course a classic American TV show that featured silly variations of classic monsters (vampires, werewolves, Frankensteins, and so on) as they try to live like a normal family in the modern world. It existed during a weird time in television, a kind of first wave of horror comedies, alongside The Addams Family and Scooby-Doo!, and supernatural comedies like Bewitched and I Dreamed of Jeannie; even soap operas got in on the craze with Dark Shadows. The original show was highly popular, achieving higher ratings than its contemporary sister show The Addams Family.

Of all kinds of material, comedy and horror are the two genres most dependent on and subservient to age and time. What was funny and/or scary in the mid-’60s usually isn’t 60 years later, so it’s surprising just how much Zombie’s truly PG Munsters movie sticks to essentially the exact same lame jokes as the old TV series. “A horse walks into the bar, the bartender says, ‘Why the long face?'” Herman Munster ‘jokes’ without any ironic self-awareness. There’s no real plot here; it’s mostly uncomfortably long periods of attempts at humor, as Lily (Sherry Moon Zombie) and Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) meet and fall in love, to the chagrin of her Grandpa (Dan Roebuck).

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The humor throughout The Munsters will likely be found in future dictionaries under the recently popular word ‘cringe.’ It’s extremely unfunny, painful in the kind of way that you honestly feel bad for the person telling the joke. As mentioned, that’s part of the tragedy of The Munsters. Everyone is trying so hard, from the over-acting to the relentless pace of the puns and jokes, and yet just about every minute of this film feels like listening to a six-year-old read from a joke book printed in the 1950s. It’s likely that only very young children will like this film, and that’s wonderful if they do; unfortunately, it’s probably too slow, weird, and spooky for children under nine (which is presumably it’s demographic). So just who is this movie for? Too stupid for adults, too odd for the pre-K crowd, The Munsters feels like a film for nobody.

The Munsters Does Look Beautiful, Though

Universal / Netflix

Nobody except costume and set designers, that is. As cringe-worthy as The Munsters is to actually watch, it’s gorgeous to look at. In fact, watching it on mute would almost definitely make this a better film (perhaps with a Rob Zombie album on in the background). The lighting is expressionistically exaggerated and goes for the extreme like most other parts of the film. Gorgeous swaths of Frankenstein-green and blood-red wash over certain scenes, while the light particles often sparkle throughout plumes of fog and mist.

The set design of the movie is generally perfect, from Grandpa’s comically large and gothic castle to the Munsters’ new neighborhood, where their elaborately dilapidated house sits next to the gorgeously recreated suburban fantasy world of Mockingbird Lane. This area isn’t introduced until what feels like five hours have passed (or an hour and 25 minutes, to be precise), and is woefully underused. Zombie and his crew created a massive, incredibly designed set in Budapest (where most of the film was shot), and the Mockingbird Lane neighborhood and house are a crowning achievement in the visual jewels for this crown of thorns.

Related: Wednesday, Velma, and The Munsters: Why ’60s Horror-Themed Comedies Are Making a Comeback

The make-up, from Wayne Toth’s studio Ex Mortis, is equally impressive. The character design is so wonderful that the costuming and make-up effects do all the heavy lifting for the actors. Again, it’d be better to watch the film on mute, as the look of these characters and the actors’ expressive faces are so much better than any of the words that hobble from their mouths only to die painfully in the audience’s ears. Regardless of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ any of these actors are (Roebuck is often delightful here, but Sheri Moon Zombie, so incredible in The Devil’s Rejects, is unfortunately terrible here), there’s not much that could be done with the script. They’re empty caricatures, piñatas filled with the rotten candy of bad jokes.

Going Straight to DVD and Netflix Was a Bad Sign

Waxwork Records
Netflix

The Munsters movie will not make anyone a fan of Zombie; if by some Halloween miracle it does, Zombie’s other films are so much more disturbing and often disgusting that they won’t be a fan for long. Inversely, any fan of Zombie will not find much to like in this film aside from the visuals, which take his usually heightened style and elevates it 1,000%. Many Rob Zombie movies have a dark, twisted sense of humor, but The Munsters is a far cry from any of that. His film also won’t make anyone a fan of the original show, and actual fans of the original will probably hate this.

It’s safe to say that Universal Pictures realized this, deciding not to waste time by releasing the film in theaters and instead go straight to DVD and Blu-ray. It’s a true shame because the intentions and effort are honest and heartfelt. Honestly, it’s surprising that Netflix paid for this; this is, after all, a film where the end credits are more enjoyable than anything else.

A co-production of Universal 1440 Entertainment and Spookshow International Films, The Munsters is now available on Netflix and on home media through Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

You can view the original article HERE.