THE MUNSTERS (2022)

Studio:     Netflix/Universal 1440 Entertainment
Director:    Rob Zombie
Writer:     Rob Zombie
Producer:  Mike Elliott, Rob Zombie
Stars:     Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Daniel Roebuck, Richard Brake, Jorge Garcia, Sylvester McCoy, Catherine Schell, Cassandra Peterson, Tomas Boykin

Review Score:

Summary:

Much to the chagrin of her father The Count, Lily and Herman Munster begin a whirlwind romance in this origin story of how the undead family went from Transylvania to Mockingbird Lane.

Synopsis:     

Review:

Have you seen that classic Season Two episode of “The Simpsons” titled “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” In it, Homer Simpson learns he has a long lost half-brother named Herb, voiced by Danny DeVito. Herb turns out to be a wealthy Detroit automaker, but he is in danger of being bought out, so he needs Homer to help create a car that can reconnect his company to the average person. Herb ends up putting blind faith in his brother, refusing concerned requests from the design team to keep Homer in check or nix his nonsensical ideas. Herb sees what Homer built for the first time at the car’s grand unveiling, and he’s mortified to discover “The Homer” became an unmarketable eyesore with a bubble dome and horns that blare “La Cucaracha.” Herb’s business goes bankrupt, he loses his lavish lifestyle, and he angrily disowns Homer as his brother. Remember that? I’m pretty sure a similar “It’ll be fine, just let him do what he wants” strategy is exactly how Rob Zombie’s “The Munsters” turned into an astonishingly aimless disaster too.

Oh, since I brought up “The Simpsons,” you know how some people often groan that the show “isn’t good anymore” or that it “jumped the shark” a long time ago? I promise you, whatever the absolute worst episode of “The Simpsons” is, it’s easily 1,000,000x more entertaining than anything in “The Munsters.”

The movie has me so stunned, I’m rethinking my criticism of Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav’s decision to shelve DC’s “Batgirl.” Zaslav infamously made headlines by publicly announcing that the company would eat the $90,000,000 they spent producing Batgirl’s feature film by not releasing it, even though word was the movie came close to being finished. Word also had it that Zaslav made the call because he worried a comparatively cheaper product made for streaming would dilute the bigger blockbuster potential of the DC brand. Fans argued “Batgirl” should be released anyway. After all, how much harm could one film really do to a popular property? Well, “The Munsters” answers that question with a loud “Hold my beer.”

Rob Zombie’s “The Munsters” isn’t merely bad. It’s beyond bad. As in, “It shouldn’t even exist” bad. Maybe because he made the movie in Hungary and no one could be bothered to fly halfway across the world to supervise, Universal apparently gave Rob Zombie carte blanche to do whatever he felt like. Their hands-off approach resulted in the cinematic equivalent of “The Homer,” an unbelievably inept mess made by someone given too much freedom to indulge in careless creative whims.

After being forced to hold their eyes open during the first cut’s screening, executives should have had Zaslav’s courage to can the movie right then and there as being wholly unfit for public consumption. Not only will there never be another iteration of this incarnation of The Munsters, who knows when The First Family of Fright will come out of their crypt again. By allowing “The Munsters” to see the light of day instead of giving it cement shoes to be sunk deep at sea where it belongs, the franchise has been set back so far, it’ll take years to wash the terrible taste of this misery-inducing misfire out of everyone’s mouths.

I’ve used adjectives like “astonishingly” and “unbelievably” because it’s practically impossible to fathom that “The Munsters” comes from industry professionals who’ve made multiple movies before. Every minute of it reads like a “fan film” in the worst possible ways, from syndicated TV-type presentation values on par with a high school production of “Our Town,” to a cast of character actors who don’t possess anywhere near the drawing power necessary to embody the endearing appeal of iconic personalities.

Putting Jeff Daniel Phillips in Fred Gwynne’s platform shoes as Herman Munster is akin to Alden Ehrenreich attempting to fill Harrison Ford’s boots as Han Solo, except Phillips embarrassingly sticks out as an even sorer thumb of woeful miscasting. Following in famous footsteps is a Herculean task to begin with, exacerbated by Jeff Daniel Phillips simply not having the screen presence to anchor a feature, let alone kickstart a fresh take on established IP. Not to disparage Phillips, but he’s made his career on lower lines of billing blocks, primarily playing secondary roles that only occasionally make a mark. Alternating between a straight take on Herman as a punk rock celebrity, then confusingly bursting into the main Munster’s signature belly laugh even though it’s anathema to an otherwise plain portrayal, Phillips is flat out, all kinds of wrong for the role.

Daniel Roebuck makes equally bizarre choices with similarly lackluster results. Instead of affable Al Lewis giving us a goofily genial Grandpa, Roebuck makes The Count (not yet a grandfather since “The Munsters” takes place before Eddie’s birth) a crusty old crank. He’s completely cheerless, much like the movie, until an abrupt about-face in the last act when he’s suddenly, inexplicably chummy with Herman. This is despite spending the entire story hating Herman because his son-in-law is too dimwitted to be betrothed to his lovelorn daughter Lily and he enabled Lily’s werewolf brother Lester to scheme The Count out of his castle.

That leaves Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily. I’ve been to bat for The Zombies before, defending unfair attacks on Sheri’s acting abilities and Rob’s continued casting of his wife. I’m not against the favoritism all. No one gives Mike Flanagan anywhere near the same temperature of heat for putting his wife Kate Siegel in all of his projects. It should be celebrated that these couples love each other so much that they also want to work together whenever possible. Just maybe not in this case.

Sheri Moon Zombie probably gives the best performance in the film, or at least the one that’s the least obnoxious and most in keeping with previous portrayals. But Rob Zombie turns her moments in “The Munsters” into a bloated glamour reel of redundant B-roll reaction shots.

An early scene depicting Lily’s disastrous first date with Count Orlock includes a gag where the camera continually cuts to Lily making awkward expressions as Orlock oddly dances with the rhythm of Elon Musk at a disco. It looks like the editor was only supposed to use one take, yet Rob Zombie insisted on including all of the footage, so there are no less than four cutaways of Lily holding up a forefinger and wagging her lower lip in shocked silence. Zombie does this again when Lily goes to see Herman perform with his band and her preening and pouting gets showcased while she wiggles in a chair. Unless you too are obsessed with gluttonously gazing at Sheri, there’s no worth to be found in all of her vanity vamping.

Even when his films don’t work for me personally, I’m on board with Rob Zombie creating unique worlds tuned to his distinct visions. Here however, Zombie doesn’t create a world so much as a dinky closet given how small everything is. “The Munsters” looks like it was shot inside of a Hot Topic for both its cramped soundstage sizes and gaudy gushes of neon glazed over every inch of every set. Made-for-cable movies from the 1990s built more believable fantasies than this.

Zombie aims for a kooky aesthetic by using Saturday morning sound effects and “Creepshow” TV tricks like spinning graphics behind someone’s head. Instead of getting a vibrant vibe of frightful fun for the whole family though, everything comes across as dirt-cheap chintzy. An animated black-and-white cartoon that stands in as a tour of Tinseltown, and a painful Eiffel Tower backdrop that’s supposed to simulate Paris, hammer home the unshakable sense that “The Munsters” must have had a budget lower than what an average carload of teens spends on a quick lunch at Taco Bell.

How can a movie this colorful be so bereft of any kind of charm or good humor at all, even accidental or incidental? What sounds amusing to you, lines like, “I would rather go into business with Jack the Ripper, who by the way is no Jack the Tipper. 5% tops with this guy.” or Herman mistakenly believing that non-alcoholic Shirley Temples make him drunk? I love the cringe comedy of bad puns and dad jokes. But with terrible music accompaniment whose warbles uncomfortably exaggerate unfunny scenes or punctuate punchlines with slide-whistle sounds, “The Munsters” doesn’t feature a single laugh, not even one courtesy “hnff” involuntarily puffed out of your nostrils.

As a lifelong fan of “The Munsters,” the movie’s infliction of extreme emotional distress has me questioning if I’m only disappointed, or if that emotion should be elevated all the way up to outright disgust. Watching this film is like watching a horrible train wreck that takes almost two overlong hours to complete its crash. I honestly don’t know if, when, or how The Munsters will recover from this. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from it, either.

Review Score: 15