Creepy, Kooky, and Mostly PG: Five Addams Films, and Wednesday

The Addams family is the only household this paper covers that has never once asked for advice. Here is everything of theirs on screen, in order. Ratings are the Motion Picture Association’s, from its register at filmratings.com, and the board does not rate television, so the two series go without.

The cartoons, from 1938. Charles Addams drew them as single panels in The New Yorker. Nobody in the family had a name. They managed.

The Addams Family, 1964 to 1966. Two seasons on ABC, sixty-four episodes, in black and white. This is where the household got its names, from Addams himself, along with a theme tune you are now humming.

The Addams Family (1991). PG-13. The certificate gives no reason. The plot is a con on the family home, and it fails, because the family enjoys being swindled more than the swindlers enjoy swindling. For the whole house, with the youngest on a lap.

Addams Family Values (1993). PG-13, “for macabre humor.” The board needed two words, and they were the right two. A nanny is hired. It goes about as well as hiring anyone into that house could. The best of the five, and I will hear no appeal.

Addams Family Reunion (1998). PG, “for comic violence and morbid humor.” Tim Curry and Daryl Hannah, and a family that turns up at the wrong reunion. It was meant as the pilot for a television series. For completists.

The Addams Family (2019). PG, “for macabre and suggestive humor, and some action.” Animated, with Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron voicing the parents. For the smallest members of the house.

The Addams Family 2 (2021). PG, “for macabre and rude humor, violence and language.” The family takes a road trip. The road is not consulted.

Wednesday (2022). Netflix, created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with Jenna Ortega in the title role and Tim Burton directing four episodes of each season. Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in 1991 and 1993, was asked back by Burton for a supporting role. The part has a predecessor, and the predecessor is in the building. For the teenagers, who will not be asked.

Across the street: The Munsters, 1964 to 1966. The same two seasons, with Universal’s own monsters in a house on a street of their own. The family that goes to work. Funny then, and still funny. Rob Zombie’s film of 2022 is rated PG, “for macabre and suggestive material, scary images and language,” and was certified under the working title “Munsters Rise Again.” I file it as an acquired taste.

Five films, three of them PG, which is as close to wholesome as the family has ever been certified. They were not trying.