THEATER
Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane star in The Addams Family.
They’re Altogether Ooky.
The Addams Family isn’t as bad as they say.
I have a tendency to give good reviews of everything. The lowest rating I’ve ever given was Two Bows, and that was for an exhibit, not a show. Because with shows; musicals; plays- there is not a better experience, not one, than seeing them. Saying this, you will not be disappointed if you see The Addams Family between now and next March 2011.
I am not lying, nor am I exaggerating. The Addams Family is the best-written, the funniest, the most impressive, the best-directed, the best-acted, the most intelligent musical I have ever seen. I’m talking about this show making Billy Elliot look like Super Mario Brothers- The Movie. Nathan Lane brings down the house as a Happy/Sad Gomez, who he plays with a smooth Spanish accent and a hatred for the right. Bebe Neuwirth plays a suicidal-ish, dancing Morticia. A passionate Wednesday, an explosive Pugsley, a mental Grandma, an electric Fester, and a… well… Lurch completes the family.
The musical revolves around modern times, in which Wednesday is 18 (even though, according to the TV show, she would be 52 in the modern day) and in love with a “normal” boy. Hilarity ensues when she invites him over for dinner and the family realizes that the Beinikes aren’t so normal after all- at least in their perspective.. Cousin Itt, the Thing, and a dancing curtain pull, all make cameos, as well as the squid Bernice and Morticia’s extremely hungry plant. The music is bouncy and cheerful, a perfect syncopation for the evil (granted, lovable evil) of the Family. Look out for When You’re An Addams, the opening number and the Addams’s welcome to their dead ancestors rising from their graves, Full Disclosure, the Addams’s game they play with visitors in which everyone must tell something they’ve never told anyone, and Let’s Not Talk About Anything Else But Love, in which Gomez, Fester, and Grandma warble about the goods and the bads of love life.
Do not miss it, because Nathan Lane leaves in March 2011, and the original Family is something everyone should see.
MOVIES
A Curious Formula: The Office + 30 Rock + Night at the Museum.
Shawn Levy directs Steve Carell and Tina Fey in an over-the-top Date Night
This review may possibly be the five billionth time I’ve disagreed with both the New Yorker and the NY Times. However, I must persist in my attempt to reveal the good-even great in movies that are panned by the top-read media. Date Night is a hilarious parody of every “suburbanites-go-to-the-city” film ever made. Steve Carell and Tina Fey are a match made in heaven. Carell’s blatant jokes and Fey’s sarcastic blurbs fit in this film. The high point of the movie is during the couple’s stolen dinner, at which they take a late couple’s reservation, and said couple turn out to be criminals. While looking around at the other diners at “Claw,” Carell sputters, “It’s that rapper… What’s his name? Sam-I-Am!” After a magnificently directed chase by the police, who believe the New Jersey couple to be the thieves of a flash drive (Fey doesn’t even know what one is) that an underworld boss is using to blackmail a government official who visits strip clubs like grocery stores… Well, it’s complicated. But what movie isn’t? Even a somewhat underdressed Mark Wahlberg can’t bring this movie down. |
