Young Eddie (Mason Cook), a disappointingly normal kid, has some
problems with the boyscouts, er, Wildlife Explorers, as they are called
here, because he has turned into a werewolf one night out camping. Of
course, nobody has noticed he was the werewolf and everybody believes it
was a baby bear, but his parents Herman (Jerry O'Connell) and Lily (Portia
de Rossi) - a totally normal-looking couple who are an artificial man and
a vampire respectively only because we are told so again and again - know
what's going on with their boy, so they move to a spooky house ... and
prepare to tell Eddie the truth about him being a monster. At the same
time, Herman's heart starts to get weaker and weaker, but vampire grandpa
(Eddie Izzard) is already looking for a new heart, which he finally finds
inside Eddie's scoutleader (Cheyenne Jackson), who conveniently dies
eventually - in an accident, disappointingly ... The 1960's
cult TV-series The
Munsters, brought to the 2010's ... and quite bluntly, it's
pathetic. No, really, if there are 10 people in this world who know
absolutely nothing about The
Munsters, then Bryan Singer and Bryan Fuller are at least 7 of
them (with the guys who have greenlit this "updated, edgier
version" of the series being the other three). No really, it's
that bad. Basically, the original series was admittedly based on one joke:
classic moviemonsters live together as a regular, even square family, and
think everybody else is weird. Now this is a concept a SITCOM is made of.
And that the series worked for not just one episode but its entire run is
thanks to its impressive cast. Mockingbird Lane doesn't try to be a
sitcom, it tries to be a soap opera with a bit of coming-of-age
undercurrents thrown in - a bad idea if this is about monsters living in a
suburban neighbourhood. What's worse is that ... well, the Munsters are
monsters only by repute, they look uncreepy, even normal to the point of being boring, and are
played by a bunch or really uncharismatic actors (apart from Eddie Izzard,
whose performance is quite amusing actually, especially considering the
dull lines he's given). And as if that wasn't insult enough, director
Bryan Singer does everything to not create any kind of atmosphere, instead
glosses over the (scarce) more interesting moments with lifeless CGI
effects that serve nothing but to show that a couple of really good
computers were at work here. The result is actually an insult, not only
to fans of the original series, but to thinking man as such - I mean, did
nobody who worked on this notice that this can only work as comedy?
Really!? I mean, there was even precedence ...
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