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The Munsters, 2022
Lily (Shari Moon Zombie) is a single vampire living with her father (Daniel Roebuck) just looking for a guy who, you know, doesn't just show up to a date with dozens of pictures of his pet rats. She's in luck when a mad scientist (Richard Brake) implants a new creation, Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips) with the brain of a murdered hack comedian. Lily and Herman hit things off and embark on a romance.
My only real exposure to the Munsters world was that when I was growing up we had a VHS copy of The Munsters Revenge, a very silly movie about Herman and Grandpa being framed for burglaries because bad guys were piloting animatronic wax figures of them around to commit crimes.
With that in mind, I didn't mind the silly nature of this film, which does seem to come from a place of affection for the characters and their world.
Now, that said, I don't think that this quite works. The comedy goes for goofy, but it is very inconsistent and a lot of the gags go on for much longer than they should. It's kind of amazing to me that the film is over 100 minutes, because not a lot actually happens in it. The film repeatedly raises interesting possibilities (like Grandpa using magic to make a perfect boyfriend for Lily to scare off Herman) that just go nowhere.
This is an easy watch in part because the cast seems to be having a good time. (It is really weird watching this so close on the heels of 31, though, because wow, some of the actors here just hours earlier for me were threatening to rape and/or disembowel each other and now they're swapping cheesy puns in technicolor). There's a sense of trying that is pretty endearing, even as it doesn't always land.
I think that fans of the original will have mixed feelings, to say the least. I enjoyed the very last shot--in black and white--more than most of the rest of the film.
The Munsters, 2022
Lily (Shari Moon Zombie) is a single vampire living with her father (Daniel Roebuck) just looking for a guy who, you know, doesn't just show up to a date with dozens of pictures of his pet rats. She's in luck when a mad scientist (Richard Brake) implants a new creation, Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips) with the brain of a murdered hack comedian. Lily and Herman hit things off and embark on a romance.
My only real exposure to the Munsters world was that when I was growing up we had a VHS copy of The Munsters Revenge, a very silly movie about Herman and Grandpa being framed for burglaries because bad guys were piloting animatronic wax figures of them around to commit crimes.
With that in mind, I didn't mind the silly nature of this film, which does seem to come from a place of affection for the characters and their world.
Now, that said, I don't think that this quite works. The comedy goes for goofy, but it is very inconsistent and a lot of the gags go on for much longer than they should. It's kind of amazing to me that the film is over 100 minutes, because not a lot actually happens in it. The film repeatedly raises interesting possibilities (like Grandpa using magic to make a perfect boyfriend for Lily to scare off Herman) that just go nowhere.
This is an easy watch in part because the cast seems to be having a good time. (It is really weird watching this so close on the heels of 31, though, because wow, some of the actors here just hours earlier for me were threatening to rape and/or disembowel each other and now they're swapping cheesy puns in technicolor). There's a sense of trying that is pretty endearing, even as it doesn't always land.
I think that fans of the original will have mixed feelings, to say the least. I enjoyed the very last shot--in black and white--more than most of the rest of the film.