This week in Yeah Sure Why Not Theater is Rob Zombie’s The Munsters (now on Netflix), a reboot-slash-prequel to the 1960s sitcom about a family of ghoul-types who were sweethearts despite their gruesome exteriors, but nevertheless scared the poop out of their suburban neighbors. It marks a tonal shift for Zombie, sort of – his music is goofy, tongue-in-cheek and rooted deeply in kitsch, but his horror films (among them The Devil’s Rejects and a couple of Halloween remakes) were grim, humorless endeavors. Which is a long way of saying that his helming the project makes sense, but it also doesn’t make sense. And that leaves the question open: Can Zombie deliver credible comedy?
THE MUNSTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Dr. Wolfgang (Richard Brake) and his lab assistant Floop (Jorge Garcia) are out a-grave-robbin’, setting into motion the first of the movie’s several belabored jokes telegraphed multiple scenes in advance and landing with mighty and egregious flops. Their goal is to stitch together the perfect human being using the burgled anatomy of dead geniuses and the like, and definitely not fill its skull with the brain of a godawful standup comic whose obit plays on TV while Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) and her father The Count (Daniel Roebuck) watch in their castle in Transylvania. Now here’s where I need to remind you of a ’90s hit song by Type O Negative, “Black No. 1,” a winking ode to goth girls with a wonderful lyric that goes, “You’ve got date at midnight with Nosferatu/Baby, Lily Munster ain’t got nothin’ on you.” And so Lily Not Yet Munster meets Orlok (also Brake) for dinner and it’s a disaster. He just prattles on and on about the Plague and his pet rats.
Once Wolfgang animates his creation and realized he’s given life to a towering oaf who guffaws endlessly at his own terrible jokes, the gears of destiny begin grinding like a rusty old Korean War-era tank, which groans mournfully like we do at this movie’s every attempt at comedy. Lily saunters into a Transylvania nightclub and sees Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) on stage, rockin’ out in leathers like Frank-Frank Ramone. It’s love at first sight. Before you know it, they’re mustached and banged like Sonny and Cher and duetting on “I Got You Babe.” Meanwhile, the plot introduces Lily’s werewolf brother Lester (Thomas Boykin), a shyster looking for a rube to dupe on a business deal in order to pay off his debts. Hmm. I wonder who that might be. Are there any dupable dopes around here?
Lily and Herman’s courtship drives the Count nuts. He disapproves. But they’re perfect for each other in that they’re both terminally annoying: Her every move and spoken word is a fluttering affectation, and he’s a stomping, obnoxious dipshit. We experience episodes from their courtship, wedding and honeymoon. There are Tarzan jokes, Uranus jokes and Playghoul Magazine jokes. The plot hodgepodges around and eventually navigates Lily, Herman and the Count to Los Angeles, where they meet a realtor and we suddenly realize this movie isn’t going to feature their son Eddie or niece Marilyn, and it’s actually an ORIGIN STORY. Gasp! The horror, the horror!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This Munsters tries to bridge the distance between Young Frankenstein and The Brady Bunch Movie, except the bridge falls down amidst the hurricane gale of our unamused deep sighs.
Performance Worth Watching: Although nothing about this screenplay works in terms of character or comedy, I did kind of enjoy Phillips’ performance as Herman, which endearingly blends simpleton boorishness and the goofy sensitivity of a wuss who’s always on the brink of tears.
Memorable Dialogue: A pair of very old jokes about being very old duly represent the script’s sub-dad-joke comedic sensibility:
“Once you hit 300, everything starts to go.” – The Count
“You know what they say, 150 is the new 100.” – Lily
Sex and Skin: Nada.
Our Take: The Munsters is asinine. For a while, one wonders if the jokes are supposed to suck, and the cast is purposely pratting them. If so, it’s not funny at first, and gets increasingly less so as the movie slogs on. What tone is Zombie trying to set here? Old-fashioned kitsch? Self-aware nudge-winkery? Endearing homage? Satirical commentary? Campy nostalgia? A little of all of it, but ultimately none of it. The movie flounders and dithers and shows no sense of comic timing, and quickly wears out its welcome. You’ll want to give it the hook. Gong it off the stage. Or worse, yawn at it for 15 minutes before backing out to the home menu and firing up Emily in Paris.
I will say Zombie puts significant effort into the visual presentation. It’s definitely a more-is-more aesthetic, and shows an obvious fetish for mad-scientist lab gear and grimy castles adorned with rickety shutters and dead foliage. Zombie stuffs backlots with goofball set pieces, crams tacky Halloween-store plastic tombstones and cotton cobwebs into every corner and fills the frame with Easter eggs for old boob-tube junkies to snatch – or to be enraged over, since it’s in lively color, bursting with bright greens and neon purples and deep reds, and is very much not in black-and-white like the old show. Oh, what blasphemy, such egregious defiance of tradition, such- such- such artistic license! Abandon all hope, ye who are rendered frothy by such things, this Munsters isn’t a facsimile of your warm memories of times propped on your elbows in front of the old Zenith console!
No, what this Munsters feels like is Zombie’s failed comedy gambit. There’s a line in the script in which the Count says, “This is all a bunch of cornball hooey,” and one can’t help but wonder – there’s much can’t-help-but-wondering one does while watching this movie – if Zombie is trolling for boos by underscoring every joke with a soundtrack cue, embellishing every stomp of Herman’s platform boots, inspiring every incident of exaggerated mugging and grating verbal flourish from the cast. Is Zombie inviting our disdain? If so, I’ll bite: Did Bazooka Joe ghost-write the screenplay? Because it makes vaudeville look like Rick and Morty. These jokes are so old – HOW OLD ARE THEY? – these jokes are so old, they ceased being funny, made a comeback, then ceased to be funny again. And The Munsters is not their second comeback.
Our Call: Should’ve left it buried. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.
