Another Unnecessary Remake

I mentioned, in passing, the other day that awful 2022 reboot of The Munsters and feel that I should elaborate.  Now, I'm not a particular fan of the original TV series, although I seem to have seen quite a few episodes of it, but it is a well made and performed half hour comedy series that can still raise the odd smile.  It's whole premise centres on the idea of a group of obvious, but amiable, monsters living in an otherwise typical American middle class sixties suburb and draws its humour from the contrast between the bizarreness of these characters and the 'normality' of their neighbourhood.  The twist, of course, is that the monsters think that they are the 'normal' ones and that everyone else is weird.  Unfortunately Rob Zombie, director and prime mover behind the 2022 film, despite professing to be a longtime fan of the series, seems to have failed to grasp this simple premise which underpins the original TV show.  Most of his film is set in 'Transylvania' where everyone seems to be a grotesque of some sort, so the Munsters seem perfectly normal there.  Even when they do travel abroad, first to Paris, then to Mockingbird Heights in the US, these locations are still presented in such a stylised fashion, that people's reaction to them seems mystifying to the audience, as the venues and their inhabitants don't seem 'normal' either.  The feeling of total unreality is compounded by the way in which the film is deliberately lit and shot - so as to complement the main characters' cartoonish quality, according to Zombie.  A statement that reinforces the feeling that he hadn't a clue as to what The Munsters was really about.

But the film isn't just off visually, everything about it seems 'off', from the terrible script that never succeeds in capturing the spirit or humour of the TV show, (with a plot that never develops into something, instead just presenting us with a disjointed series of scenes and situations), to the acting performances and characterisations.  The latter are particularly jarring, with writers and actors seeming to think that long hair and lots of gesticulating encapsulates the character of Lily, while clearly believing that the make up alone is sufficient to define Herman and Grandpa as characters.  Herman is particularly poorly characterised - not to mention acted - while I wouldn't expect any actor in the role to give an impersonation of Fred Gwynn , this version of the character was so far from the original as to be unrecognisable.  In the TV series, Grandpa's gripe with Herman was simply that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but in this film version he simply outright hates him - and who can blame him, as this Herman comes over as, not just stupid, but an obnoxious prick with no redeeming qualities.  Gwynn's performance as Herman was, by contrast, masterful, bringing out the character's innate warmth, gentleness, good humour and child-like glee at anything that seems novel to him.  Ultimately, though, the biggest problem the 2022 film faces is that it comes over as a glorified home movie, with the main roles being played the director's wife and friends.  At best, it is a piece of fan fiction, falling into the common trap that bedevil such creations - it represents what a fan or fans think that the show should have been like, projecting their own interpretation - which doesn't match the expectations of the wider audience familiar with the material - onto the characters and situations.  The Munsters (2022) stands as a dire warning to studios everywhere as to how careful they should be in terms of who they allow to get their hands on their most beloved intellectual properties.