Garfield's Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is here, and it is time for another review on a special based on the holiday. Let’s take a look at the 1989 short, “Garfield’s Thanksgiving.” I remember watching the cartoon somewhat growing up, so I thought of checking it out in celebration of today.

Garfield is ready to celebrate Thanksgiving! A trip to the veterinarian has Liz putting Garfield on a diet and John getting a date for Thanksgiving. When John messes up the Thanksgiving dinner, will his grandmother be able to save him and will Garfield get to enjoy his Thanksgiving by eating whatever he wants?

Directed by Phil Roman, Gerard Baldwin, Bob Nesler, and John Sparey, “Garfield’s Thanksgiving” aired on November 22, 1989. It aired for a few years, but “A Garfield Christmas” and “Garfield’s Halloween Adventure” aired more frequently. It has been put on with Garfield’s other two specials on one DVD. Jim Davis also did a Garfield storybook adaptation of this special. This also was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program.

There aren’t many Thanksgiving specials or movies. With “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” “Garfield’s Thanksgiving” is one of the few cartoons (special or even movie) that is about the holiday, so if you want a Thanksgiving special to watch yearly, this is one of your choices. That’s not to say that it’s necessarily a bad thing.

“Garfield’s Thanksgiving” is a rather nice episode that feels a lot like the Garfield cartoon. The show starts out about Garfield’s diet on the holiday but quickly changes to Jon’s date with Liz. JPRoscoe said in his review, “The Jon/Liz relationship was always a theme in the old comic and the series, but it never made much sense because of shows like this which shows Liz and Jon having a great time together.”

JPRoscoe continued, “I like how the show forces the Thanksgiving issue by having Jon tell Liz about Thanksgiving to stall for the dinner.” It is funny because Thanksgiving is promoted as a reason to eat a lot in the special and then Jon uses Thanksgiving as an excuse to keep Liz busy so they can eat a lot. It is almost a little ironic.

“Garfield’s Thanksgiving” is a decent short for a holiday that doesn’t get much attention from Hollywood or TV. JPRoscoe ended his review by saying, “I wish there were more specials on Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving is a tricky holiday.  I wish that there were more options but Thanksgiving location between Halloween and Christmas hurts it…so enjoy Garfield’s Thanksgiving and have some turkey.”

I don’t know if I have ever said this in the past, but this is a holiday that just gets overlooked and no one seems to really give it as much attention as it deserves. This short really captures the essence of preparing for a dinner and making everything perfect. Find this online and watch it because it is really good. Especially if you’re a fan of Garfield.

Happy Thanksgiving. Make sure to enjoy the dinner tonight, but don’t overeat to a point where you get exhausted. Stay tuned tomorrow for the finale of “Lou Diamond Phillips Month.”

Hollywood Homicide

The most popular jobs in movies about Hollywood are cops, thieves, prostitutes, psychics and actors, and to this list we have got to add the ones everyone is scared of, real estate brokers. “Hollywood Homicide,” released in 2003, has all of these with a murderer, a cop who is who is a real-estate agent, a cop who wants to be an actor, and a psychic who can see that the murderer will be in an SUV on Rodeo Drive in half an hour. There are also two prostitutes. One is named Ferre Salesclerk, which can hardly be improved on. The other is Wanda, an undercover cop in drag. There is room for fixing.

The movie stars Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett as the two cops, named Joe Gavilan and K.C. Calden, who are detectives assigned to Hollywood. Galvan is so busy with his real estate business that he tries to sell a house to the owner of a club where four rappers have just been murdered, and later negotiates the purchase price during a police chase. Calden has decided he wants to be an actor, and makes Galivan rehearse lines for him from A Streetcar Named Desire. Galivan is not impressed: “Who wrote this stuff?” The movie was directed by Ron Shelton, who co-wrote with Robert Souza. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “Shelton also made "Bull Durham" and "White Men Can't Jump" and specializes in funny dialogue for guy characters who would rather talk than do just about anything else.” One of the enjoyments of “Hollywood Homicide” is that it’s more interested in its two silly cops than in the murder plot. Their dialogue transfers otherwise simple scenes. Ebert noted, “It's kind of a double act, between a man who has seen everything and a man who seen too much.” Consider the part where K.C. drives a vehicle with a mother and her two small children. He needs it to chase a villain. “We’re gonna die!” yells one of the kids. Ebert said, “"Yes," agrees K.C., who moonlights as a yoga instructor, "we are all going to die someday, but..." His philosophical observations are cut short by a crash.”

The movie starts with an upbeat song on a rap group in a music club. Four people are dead when Joe and K.C. arrive to investigate. Joe immediately orders food. K.C. tells the club owner he is an actor. Their investigation is hindered by an inconvenient development: They are under investigation by Benne Macko, played by Bruce Greenwood, the Internal Affairs guy who hates Joe, and who reminds everyone once again that movie villains usually have a hard C or K in their names.

Ebert said, “Joe is suspected of "mingling funds," which is to say, he confuses his personal debts and the debts of his real estate business.” He has been seen with Ferre Salesclerk, played by Lolita Davidovich, who is a known prostitute. No wonder. You do not get to be an unknown prostitute by being driven around town in your own stretch limousine. Internal Affairs thinks he is fooling around with Salesclerk, but he isn’t. He’s playing around with Ruby the psychic, played by Lena Olin. Ebert said, “She is yet another in the baffling legion of Los Angeles women who believe it is fun to make love on a blanket on the hardwood floor of an empty house while surrounded by a lot of candles.”

At Harrison Ford’s age, this counts as a dangerous stunt. But Ford just gets better, more purified, more laconic and more sternly likeable, every year. It is hard to catch him doing anything at all while he’s acting, and yet whatever it is he isn’t doing, it works. Ebert said, “You don't feel he's going for laughs when he tries to sell the club owner a house, while the two of them are standing in fresh pools of blood, metaphorically speaking; you feel he desperately needs to unload the house.”

Ebert continued, “Hartnett makes an able partner for Ford, trading deadpan dialogue and telling everyone he's really an actor. He's given one of Shelton's nicest little scenes, when he goes to the morgue and looks at the dead bodies of the murder victims (he hates looking at dead bodies), and then notices some other dead bodies that have just arrived at the morgue, checks their shoe sizes, and says, "Hey ... those guys shot these guys."” There is a chase and a half at the end of the movie, a lot of it near the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. That gives the movie a chance to interrupt Robert Wagner as he’s leaving his handprints in front of Grumann’s Chinese Theatre, and obviously the movie is filled with cameos and people walking by, including Frank Sinatra Jr. as a show-biz lawyer, Martin Landau very funny as a passing producer who needs to leave his mansion, Lou Diamond Phillips as Wanda the cop in drag, Gladys Knight, Dwight Yoakam, Isaiah Washington, Master P, Kurupt, Eric Idle, Dr. Dre and just plain Dre.

Ebert said, “Much of the closing excitement depends on the Fallacy of the Climbing Killer, that dependable chase cliche in which the killer climbs to a high place, from which he cannot escape unless he can fly.” “Hollywood Homicide” uses this as an excuse to show police helicopters and TV news helicopters flying over one another out of the skies. It’s a masterful chase, well done, but the dialogue is the reason to see the movie. This may be the most exciting film ever made about real estate.

Ebert noted, “I am aware that "realtor" is a trademark and is always supposed to be used with a capital "R." But I refuse to go along. Realtors can complain all they want, but why should they get an upper-case R just because they say so? Would we capitalize Philosopher, Exterminator, Proctologist or Critic?”

This is a really funny movie. If you haven’t seen it, see if and have a good laugh. Don’t listen to everyone else who has bashed this movie. See it for yourself and judge it based on your own thoughts. I think everyone will get a good laugh out of this, and it is an action-packed thriller that you will get in to.

Look out next week when I end off “Lou Diamond Phillips Month” with another movie he did that is based on true events.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Last night, I checked out the Marvel film, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which came out in September in theaters for 45 days before being released on Disney+ two days ago. How is this compared to the past Marvel movies in the MCU?

The one big thing that has been missing from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a feeling of closeness when it comes to the action. There have been a lot of highly cinematic moments, but the amount of computer-generated imagery, especially in the fist fights, makes the scenes feel repetitive and, sadly, boring after they’ve been done countless times.

That absence is mentioned in a great way in the MCU’s first film focused on Asian characters. Based on a comic character that first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1973, the film talks about Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) living as Shawn in San Francisco, where he leads a somewhat lost career as a valet along with his friend Katy (Awkwafina).

As a prologue mentions, however, he has special fighting skills in his blood from his father, Wenwu (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung), and mother, Jiang Li (Fala Chen). When mysterious criminals try to steal a pendant from Shang-Chi, Katy and him fly to Macau, where Shang-Chi is reunited with his sister, Xialing, played by Meng’er Zhang in her film debut. The two soon find that Wenwu, who has the titular rings, is trying to seek power where both of them play a part, a mission that is shown by an overwhelming amount of grief.

Alex Bentley said in his review, “Written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, with co-writing credits to Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham, Shang-Chi is the second film in Phase 4 of the MCU, but given how backward-looking Black Widow was, it really feels like a fresh start.” Except for a few brief cameos (Ronny Chieng and BD Wong) and minor references, it has almost no connection to the previous Marvel films, which makes it feel really nice in this continuous franchise.

Bentley mentioned, “Consequently, Cretton and his team are given the freedom to create the character of Shang-Chi without any built-in expectations. Almost from the start, Shang-Chi and Katy are a lot of fun to watch together, showing a level of friendship that is enviable. And that’s even before Shang-Chi starts showing off his Kung Fu skills, most memorably aboard a bus careening down multiple San Francisco streets and on scaffolding on the side of a building in Macau.”

Unfortunately, the film has to be forced to use so much CGI. You can predict the scenes in the first half of the film have so much CGI, but they’re filmed in such an up-close and dynamic kind of way that you can feel every blow that is given. That’s not the same in the second half, where people mostly fight from a distance as the stakes are risen from personal to beasts. Bentley said, “Much of the emotional groundwork that had been laid by Cretton is overwhelmed by incomprehensible airborne combat.”

Bentley continued, “Liu is a natural as the lead, making it a wonder that he mostly has bit TV parts on his resumé prior to this. He has an abundance of charisma both in and out of fighting scenes, so it’s easy to see why he was chosen for the role.” With this, “Crazy Rich Asians,” “The Farewell,” and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” Awkwafina has become the actress to go to when telling Chinese stories, and she’s as fun and active as always. Also great are Tony Chiu-Wai Leung and Michelle Yeoh, who really takes over when she comes in the second half.

Bentley said, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings bodes well for the continued storytelling success of the MCU.” Even though there are some supernatural elements, it’s at its best when it shows the innate martial arts skills of the protagonist and the unique story of his family.

Spoiler alert: the mid-credits scene shows Wong introducing Shang-Chi and Katy to Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Carol Danvers (Brie Larson). They see that the ten rings are acting as a beacon to something. In the post-credits scene, Xialing becomes the new leader of the Ten Rings.

This is one of the best MCU movies, hands down, and another one of my favorites. You have to see this movie on Disney+. You will fall in love with this movie and it will blow you away with how beautiful it looks, how the fights scenes are like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and the comedy. Expect Ben Kingsley to reprise the same role from “Iron Man 3.”

Thank you for joining in on today’s review. Stay tuned next Friday for the continuation of “Lou Diamond Phillips Month.”

Stand and Deliver

Rita Kempley started her review by saying, “"Stand and Deliver" is a rousing, real-life underdog drama -- "Hoosiers" with logarithms. This time the Cinderella story is set at a high school in East Los Angeles; the hero is a driven, Bolivian-born teacher; and the players are remedial mathematicians who triumph over calculus.”

Edward James Olmos’ powerful performance as workaholic teacher Jamie Escalante pushes the movie a lot as Escalante pushes a class of unmotivated Latinos to study math. “What’s cal-coo-luz?” asks one tough student who, like the rest, can barely subtract. Kempley mentioned, “Escalante, his pate peeping through his plastered-back linguine hair, goads, kids and cajoles the Garfield High seniors into bettering themselves.”

Fearless as he is funny, Escalante faces down Chuco, played by Daniel Villarreal, with a wisecrack: “Tough guys don’t do math. Tough guys deep fry chicken for a living.” He loses Chuco but wins the respect of his partner Angel, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, a gangster wearing a hairnet. He calls Angel “net head” and threatens, “I’ll break your neck like a toothpick.” Standing up to bullies still works. His antics become popular when he comes to class with a meat cleaver – not for self-defense, but to cut an apple in half, thereby shockingly demonstrating the concept of 50%.

Kempley mentioned, “Unflappable as a Borsch Belter fending off hecklers, he plays hard to get when the kids start with the smart talk and spitballs. "You think I want to do this? The Japanese pay me to do this. They're tired of making everything." He tempts the dispirited youths, promising them unheard-of powers.”

Angel stays a charming rascal, but a rascal who is also a calculus genius. The fat girl, the pretty girl, the brain, the boy who fixes cars, all succeed to meet Escalante’s high expectations and beyond. Tough hours, racial prejudice, bureaucrats and broken hearts do not discourage him. Kempley noted, “Chewing their pencils and crinkling their foreheads, the Garfield seniors enter the Math Super Bowl -- the forbidding National Advanced Placement calculus test.” However, that is not the end of it.

Kempley mentioned, “This modest, time-tested story line pits the little people against the establishment, like "The Milagro Beanfield War," but not so evocatively. Even though Cuban-born director Ramon Menendez is familiar with barrio culture, there's nothing rich and pervasive in the movie's atmosphere. The language, yes. But you can't sense the salsa. It's all math anxiety, and no milieu.”

Perhaps with the limited budget, Menendez has made a rather simple film. Kempley noted, “He keeps to the classroom instead of the streets, capitalizing on the charm of his modern Don Quixote and the natural dynamics inherent in a clique of students. Blackboard computations can't compare, however, with basketball or bean farmers.” “Stand and Deliver,” released in 1988, with its small scope, would have made a perfect television drama focusing on character over action, dialogue over cinematography. It takes a stand, but not a grandstand.

Olmos is amazing as Escalante, whose determination is larger than life even though the man isn’t. Kempley said, “He's almost too human, a pudge whose chest shows through where the buttons gape -- a former computer nerd with the nerve of Zorro. As the chief troublemaker, Phillips lends the stardust. Slouched at his desk, his legs stretched out, he oozes the bravado that adolescents mistake for confidence. But under the machismo, Escalante finds the perennial schoolboy.”

This isn’t a corny film. “Stand and Deliver” is inspirational, but never sentimental. It resists so many temptations. It cries out for sentimentality. However, this is a drama as honest as its protagonist, a work that comes from the heart – the heart of a computer programmer.

As you may have guessed, this is a very powerful movie that you should all see. You could compare this to “Lean On Me,” but this is good in its own respective way. Check it out and see for yourself. My brother was showing my cousins this one day, so I only saw a little bit of it. Later on, I checked it out on my own and I fell in love with it. I give this a recommendation.

Look out next week when I continue “Lou Diamond Phillips Month” with a film that really got slammed by critics, but I actually liked.

La Bamba

For the month of November, I was going back and forth on what I would review. However, now I have decided that I will review every movie that had the great Lou Diamond Phillips. I will start with the 1987 classic that I saw in Spanish Class in High School, “La Bamba.”

The movie starts with a scene that first looks like a flashback. Some teenage boys are playing basketball on school grounds. Way over their heads, a light plane flies over them. The colors of this scene are faded, like an old memory, and the voices sound like they are in a distance. There is slow motion. Another plane shows up. The basketball game continues. We get the feeling that this is a slow summer afternoon. Suddenly, the two planes crash into one another and fall on the school grounds below.

Because “La Bamba” is the story of Ritchie Valens, we think this is his flashback. However, he was not there when the planes fell, and the scene appears to be how he might have thought it went. One of his friends was killed that day. He always believed that if he had been on the school grounds, he also would have been killed. That was why he never liked to fly on planes.

The scene itself is very powerful. Roger Ebert said in his review, “But I wonder if it is the right way to open "La Bamba."” Everyone who watches this movie will know that Valens died in an airplane crash with Buddy Holly (Marshall Crenshaw) and the Big Bopper (Stephen Lee) on February 3, 1959, the day the music died. Ebert said, “The opening scene is followed by several other references to Valens' fear of flying, and the effect is to put the whole movie under a cloud, to weigh down every scene with the knowledge of impending death.”

Ebert continued, “That robs "La Bamba" of a quality I think it could use: the sense of fun.” This is a sincere, well-acted movie about the short life of a small rock ‘n’ roll singer, and by the time it’s over we almost have the feeling Valens would have been surprised not to have died in a plane accident.

He is played by Lou Diamond Phillips as a serious, thoughtful, strongly focused young man who wanted to play his music more than anything else in life. His dedication almost goes to an obsession. He never seems to really let go.

Valens only had three famous songs. His public career lasted less than six months. He died before he turned 18. There isn’t a lot of information to draw from as there was for “The Buddy Holly Story.” So, the director, Louis Valdez, tells the story with information about Valens’ family, especially his hard-working, happy mother (Rosana De Soto) and his half-brother (Esai Morales), who both supports him and dislikes him.

Valens’ real last name was Valenzuela. He was a Mexican-American, raised for a time in refugee labor camps, and he idolized the older brother who would show up from time to time on a stylish motorcycle. However, he loved music more and began to sing wherever he could find work in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. His family moved to town and Valens got a girlfriend – a blond Anglo named Donna (Danielle von Zerneck), whose parents didn’t like him – inspiring Donna, one of his famous songs.

He had some of the normal journeys growing up, and the movie tells a lot of a trip he and his brother took to Tijuana, where Valens was less interested in girls than in a band (in the movie it is, of course, playing La Bamba).

Once Valens is seen by a small record producer, played by Joe Pantoliano, his career surprisingly rises. He records a song, it is a hit, he is invited by Alan Freed, played by Jeffrey Alan Chandler, to show up at one of his original rock ‘n’ roll stage shows in Brooklyn and two other hits follow relatively fast. Valens made one important artistic decision: Despite that he didn’t speak Spanish, he insisted on recording La Bamba in Spanish, using the overwhelming logic that if Nat King Cole could record in Spanish, he also could.

Valens’ last tour is handled in an almost obligatory way. We know how the movie will end, however. The Big Bopper comes backstage, saying “Hello, baby!” to everyone he meets. Buddy Holly sings Crying, Waiting, Hoping. They go to the airport in a snowstorm, Holly flips a coin and Valens calls heads and wins his place on the fated plane. Inevitably, still to come is a movie about the Big Bopper, which will be called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Pilot!” (“He Was at the Controls the Day the Music Died!”).

This is a good small movie, sweet and sentimental, about a kid who never really got a chance to show his talent. The best things in it are the most surprising parts: the look of everyday life, or a loving mother, of a brother who loves and hates him, of a kid growing up and getting famous and leaving everyone standing around at his funeral surprised that his life ended just as it looked like it was starting.

Undeniably, this is a powerful movie that will stay with you after you watch it. After seeing this in Spanish Class, I never forgot this movie. I’m glad I saw it there because I really liked the movie, but I was sad by the end. I didn’t know about Ritchie Valens, but after seeing this movie, now I am familiar with him, even though I don’t know his entire life story. Still, if you can, watch this movie because you will love it. Especially if you like listening to La Bamba, I would recommend this.

Sorry for posting this late. I was going to start, but my computer had a little difficulty. Now look out next week when I look at another powerful movie in “Lou Diamond Phillips Month.”

Halloween Kills

Last night, I saw “Halloween Kills,” which came out in theaters and on Peacock (for 60 days) on the 15^th. I decided to check it out on Peacock and not go to the theaters, so I will let everyone know what I thought about it.

Richard Roeper started his review by saying, “For those of you keeping gore, I mean score, at home, Michael Myers a.k.a. The Shape from the “Halloween” movies will be celebrating his 64th birthday in a few days, but the relentless killer behind the white mask remains in remarkably good shape. I guess a steady appetite for destruction and gruesome kills keeps one slim, trim and grim.”

If there’s one thing the residents of Haddonfield, Illinois, should know by now, it’s that about 60 years after six-year-old Michael murdered his teenage sister Judith, 35 years after Michael went around murdering people in the late 1970s and just hours after he killed more than a dozen locals, he has changed into something immortal, something completely indestructible, something as strong as a comic villain. Roeper noted, “And yet when a diminutive, portly, escaped mental patient who looks like an unkempt Wallace Shawn wanders into a hospital where an unruly mob has gathered and the poor soul starts wobbling around, the townsfolk think this guy is the evil entity who has wreaked so much carnage, and they start chasing him around as if they’re in a bad “Frankenstein” sequel.” Come on, mob!

Roeper said, “That’s only one of the head-scratching, unintentionally comedic, ludicrous developments in the thudding disappointment that is “Halloween Kills,” the follow-up to the exciting and clever 2018 reboot/sequel that marked the return of Jamie Lee Curtis and was a direct sequel to the 1978 original.” You can forget about “Halloween II” and “Halloween III” and “Halloween H20” and every other sequel, and consider this the third movie in this alternate universe of the franchise, with many callbacks to the 1978 and 2018 films and many characters who were children back int eh 1970s and almost escaped Michael’s knight and are now adults who are still haunted and want this for of evil to finally end and die.

Good luck with that.

“Halloween Kills” starts right after the events of the 2018 film, where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) trapped Michael Myers in a safe room in Laurie’s house and set the place on fire. As Laurie is rushed to the hospital with a stab to her abdomen, she sees firetrucks driving to her home and screaming, “Nooooo! Let it burn!” However, emergency responders arrive at the house just in time for Michael to come out of the burning basement and thoroughly take them out, one by one – and he’s once again loose on the streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night, ready to stab, jab, gouge, punch, and kill anything in his path.

With Laurie (and thus the great Jamie Lee Curtis) sidelined in the hospital, “Halloween Kills” changes the protagonist to Tommy (Anthony Michael Hall), who was one of the kids Lauire was babysitting on that famous night in 1978 and meets up with so many other survivors in a bar on Halloween night every year to raise a glass to Laurie and to insist the locals to never forget, or something like that. Another subplot involves a gay couple named Big John and Little John (Scott MacArthur and Michael McDonald, respectively) and get this: They’ve moved into Michael’s childhood home and completely renovated the place from top to bottom. Roeper noted, “On Halloween night, Big John and Little John break out the charcuterie plate, smoke some weed and watch “Minnie and Moskowitz,” I kid you not, and they’re woefully unprepared when Michael comes a-knockin’ on the back door and then the front door.”

As Laurie and other characters give really hard speeches about the true look of evil and how there’s strength in numbers but if the townsfolk aren’t careful, they’ll become as evil and savage as Michael himself, the Masked One carves a bloody path through Haddonfield, killing characters who behave as vacuous as the victims in countless of other typical slasher movies. Roeper said, “Granted, there are some darkly entertaining and strange moments, e.g., when Michael suddenly develops a Hannibal Lecter-like flair for the dramatic, arranging a murdered couple in the same pose they struck for a framed photo on the mantle and dropping the needle on a turntable to play “Can I Have This Dance for the Rest of My Life?” by Anne Murray.”

Now wait, we’ve just heard from a police man who had the chance to kill Miachel in 1978 but missed his chance – and this guy says Michael is a six-year-old boy with the strength of a man who acts like an animal. How did he suddenly get so sophisticated, with the bizarrely arranged corpse displays and twisted musical selection?

It’s almost like “Halloween Kills” is an erratic, chaotic mess.

For a sequel to the 2018 film, which was the best sequel in the franchise, this one just gets an average rating. I was expecting better from the film, but this one just ended up being a disappointment, like many of the other sequels. That is why I do not recommend you to go to the theaters to see this. Instead, if you have the paid version of Peacock, see it on there, since it will be available on there for 60 days.

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you enjoyed today’s review. Enjoy trick-or-treating tomorrow night. Look out next month to see what I will review next.

The Addams Family 2

The animated sequel “The Addams Family 2,” released at the beginning of this month in theaters and on Video On Demand, improves on the previous film similarly to how “Addams Family Values” did to the first live-action film. Sean P. Means said in his review, “Maybe movies about the ghoulish Addams Family work like the old “Star Trek” franchise, where the even-numbered ones were the good ones.”

Means noted, “Like “Addams Family Values,” the animated sequel centers on someone trying to exploit a rift within the solid-as-a-gravestone cohesion of the Addams clan.” This time, it’s middle-school intelligent Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz), feeling overwhelmed by the loving attention of her father, Gomez (Oscar Isaac), as she demonstrates her science-fair project – attaching the intelligence of her pet squid, Socrates, into her vacuous Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll).

The science fair is a disappointment for Wednesday, because Gomez and Morticia, voiced by Charlize Theron, appear, and because the powers that want everyone a winner. Wednesday is moderated kind of when Cyrus Strange, voiced by Bill Hader, the tech billionaire who sponsors the science fair, credits her originality and intelligence.

Means says, “A fretful Gomez grasps at straws to find a way to bond with his precious daughter, landing on the idea of a cross-country family vacation.” Wednesday hates the idea, but is soon dragged into Gomez’ desperate attempts to create some bonding time at famous tourist attracts like Salem, Mass., Niagara Falls and Death Valley. What Wednesday doesn’t know is that Gomez is also hiding something on this trip: The claims of a lawyer, voiced by Wallace Shawan, representing an unknown client, who believes Wednesday was switched for another baby in the maternity ward.

As the family drives their fearsome RV across the country, Wednesday enjoys herself by torturing her brother, Pugsley (Javon “Wanna” Walton), while Fester finds out Wednesday’s squid experiment has some surprising side effects.

Directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon find so much good humor in the creepiness of this eccentric family, and the script (by Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit) carves Wednesday’s isolation trouble for some genuinely funny moments. The writers also sprinkle the narrative with jokes that might go over the children’s heads, but land rightfully with the adult viewers. For example, the signpost in Death Valley, pointing to famous slasher-film locations like Crystal Lake and Elm Street.

“The Addams Family 2” isn’t as funny as Paul Rudnick’s satirical script of “Addams Family Values” was. But it does show signs of fun and silliness that the first animated film didn’t have, and proves that there may be some life in this franchise that we all thought was buried.

For those who actually liked the first animated movie, you should see this. If you don’t feel comfortable seeing this in theaters, you can easily watch this On Demand, since that’s what I did. Check this out with the whole family and you will enjoy it, I assure you.

Alright everyone, we have now come to the end of “Addams Family Month.” I hope all of you enjoyed it, as I felt they perfectly fit with Halloween. Hopefully all of you will check out most of the films in the franchise this month, as I think most of them people will enjoy it.

Look out next month to see what other excitement I will review.