Acerbic teen on dark path
It’s a seemingly perfect marriage of director to material and the result is as ooky, spooky and kooky as anyone might have hoped, writes James Croot.
Has there ever been a more perfect match of director to material than Wednesday?
I guess a Guillermo Del Toro-take on Charles Addams’ weird and wild collection of oddball relatives would be fascinating, but Tim Burton’s gothic sensibilities fit perfectly alongside the macabre aesthetic of the cartoonist’s satire of the ideal 20thcentury American family, who first appeared in The New Yorker in 1938.
It fact, it’s hard to believe Burton wasn’t responsible for two early crowd-pleasing 1990s big-screen adaptations, especially since one of his many muses – Christina Ricci – played young Wednesday Addams (Men in Black’s Barry Sonnenfeld was the man behind the camera).
But now, in his first foray into TV since his The Word of Stainboy mini-series of shorts more than 20 years ago, the man who gave us his unique, twisted visions of Batman, Alice in Wonderland, Sweeney Todd and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is at the helm of a Riverdale/ Chilling Adventures of Sabrina-style Addams Family
update – and the result is exactly as ooky, spooky and kooky as anyone might have hoped.
Anchored by a fabulous, acerbic turn from Jane the Virgin, X and the most recent Scream’s Jenna Ortega as the eponymous monochromeloving and Machiavellian eldest Addams child, Wednesday is an eight
part teen black comedy that should delight fans of the franchise – and Burton.
Expelled from Nancy Reagan High School for piranha-based revenge on bullies who had been hounding her younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), teen Wednesday now has to attend her parents’ alma mater, Nevermore Academy.
‘‘That boy’s parents were going to file attempted murder charges,’’ mother Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) chides. ‘‘How would that have looked on your permanent record?’’
‘‘Terrible – everyone would know that I failed to get the job done,’’ Wednesday replies.
Morticia is delighted her daughter will now haunt the
halls where she was once captain of the fencing team, but Queen of the Dark Prom and president of the Seance Society Wednesday is determined to escape.
Unimpressed by principal Weems’ (Gwendoline Christie) platitudes, housemaster Miss Thornhill’s (a pitch-perfect cameo from Ricci) reassurances of pastoral care and room-mate Enid’s (Emma Myers) rainbow colour scheme, Wednesday has no plans to fit in with the fangs, furs, stoners or scales who make up the student body.
That she has succeeded in that aim becomes clear when a tangle with the school’s Queen Bee is followed by a falling masonry attempt on her life.
However, during the first of her weekly court-ordered therapy sessions in the nearby town of Jericho, she makes her first bid for freedom.
Evading Weems, Wednesday makes her way to the Weathervane coffee shop, where she strikes an unlikely ally in barista Tyler (Hunter Doohan). His offer to help her ‘‘escape this hell-hole’’ is only thwarted by local thugs.
Although swiftly repelled by Wednesday, the scuffle attracts the attention of Sheriff Donovan Galpin (Jamie McShane), Tyler’s father.
A man who claims to have a longstanding grudge against Wednesday’s father Gomez (Luis Guzman), he now begins to wonder if Wednesday is responsible for a series of fatal, monstrous attacks just outside the town limits.
And to add to Wednesday’s woes, she now appears to be plagued by visions that seem to be portents of future events.
From a suitably atmospheric score by regular Burton collaborator Danny Elfman to the brilliant use of Roy Orbison’s In Dreams, The Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black and Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien, aurally, Wednesday is a tonal triumph. Visually, Burton appears to be having a ball with a palette that ranges from deepest black to gaudy pastels.
The acting ensemble is uniformly excellent. Game of Thrones’ Christie and newcomer Myers are the standouts, and the production design and attention to detail are what you’d expect from stop-motion animation fan Burton.