Monster Family
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 A scary family for the wrong reasons.
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"A horrible family turns into horrible monsters in a horrible movie."
— The description for Bobsheaux's review.
Monster Family (occasionally advertised as Happy Family) is a computer-animated family film based on the book, "Happy Family" by David Safier. The film was released worldwide in 2017 to mostly negative reception.
Plot
After growing lonely of not having a bride in centuries, Dracula sends Baba Yaga to turn Emma Wishbone into a vampire, inadvertently getting her family turned into monsters as well. Now, the Wishbones try to track down Dracula and Baba Yaga to transform back.
Why It Should Never Have Gone On Vacation
- The animation, while not as bad as some other films such as Norm of the North or Arctic Dogs, is still mediocre and even downright ugly at times. Whilst every aspect of the characters is done in excruciating detail, it doesn't save the animation from looking unlovely and even gross at times (Which isn't helped by some scenes being entirely dedicated to gross-out humor).
- The characters are awful, and the main characters themselves are little more than cliched and ridiculously overdone and unpleasant family stereotypes. Also, the other characters in the film aren't much better.
- Fay, arguably the worst character (which is really saying a lot given the competition), is a stereotypical bratty, self-absorbed teenage girl who's always insulting her family and only thinks about getting the popular guy. There's even a scene where she, for no reason, starts hitting and kicking her little brother. To the point of throwing him down the stairs.
- Frank is the general workaholic, sleepy husband who spends so much time at his job, he can't spend time with his family. And to add insult to injury, his defining trait is flatulence.
- Max, while he isn't mean or selfish, is little more than the stereotypical nerd who lacks self-confidence and is bullied because of it.
- Emma is the overworked wife desperately trying to keep her disaster of a family together. While she isn't exactly "unlikable" (for the majority of the film anyway), there is one scene where she ends up getting into a fight with her daughter and ends up driving her away, and when Max leaves as well, she drives Frank away for no apparent reason.
- And Dracula himself, the reason he's hunting down Emma and trying to seduce her? She accidentally called him while trying to call the costume store, ended up saying "I want your teeth", and then, he just automatically falls for her. Plus, why does Dracula even have a cellphone?
- Most of the supporting/minor characters, in general, are nasty and just randomly start acting hostile towards one another for no reason. And in the rare cases where they're not, they're extremely forgettable and are still walking clichés. There's the bully (Max's bully), the teenage crush (Fay's crush), the sidekick who serves as the foil to the protagonist (Cheyenne), the pointless comic reliefs (Dracula's bats, who also double as rip-offs of the minions from Despicable Me), and the list goes on. And the family themselves doesn't go through any believable or complex character development and simply forgive each other immediately in the end and get themselves turned back to normal in the process.
- Both the English dub and the original German version are absolutely terrible, as both of them suffer from poor voice acting and terrible dialogue. With Baba Yaga is easily the worst offender of them all when it comes to the former. As her voice in both versions is downright insufferable. The lip syncing is also awful, as it barely ever matches up with what the characters themselves are saying, in both versions. As sometimes, the characters mouths are shown to be closed when they're talking or their mouths don't stop moving even when they've stopped talking. And the dialogue is more often than not cringeworthy and laughable, and often tries so hard to be funny that it comes of as the exact opposite.
- The film has a lot of gross-out elements, such as when a bird goes to the toilet in Emma's coffee cup, which the audience gets a nice close-up of. And not long after, she steps in a fecal matter bucket and it splatters everywhere inside her bookstore, and then there's the aforementioned fact that most of the time Frank's on-screen, he happens to be passing gas. And it doesn't even stop there! As later, Baba Yaga burps in Emma's face and one of Dracula's bats sneezes onto another, and not to forget, there is a scene where one of Dracula’s bats eats its own earwax with a violin bow, which is plain disgusting and cringeworthy.
- The editing is intriguingly choppy and terrible.
- This movie shows an Airbus A380, which is a double-decker airplane and largest aircraft in the world, but the inside of it doesn’t even look like an A380.
- While the movie tries to be funny and charming family film, it's attempts at being so almost always come off as cringe, unpleasant, mean-spirited, or gross instead. For example, we have a scene where it appears that Emma's co-worker, Cheyenne, has hung herself, a scene where Cheyenne puts her bare foot on Emma's face (which happens to have occurred not long after the previous one), a scene where the family gets mad at their mom for trying to bring them all together for a fun outing, they end up embarrassing themselves by pretending to be the band their mistaken for at said outing, and many more scenes.
- Speaking of the scene with them pretending to be the band when arriving at the costume party, the fact that they act like they have to pretend to be the band makes no sense, as they could've easily explained to the people there they there was a misunderstanding and that they actually aren't the band. And then the people in the audience for the concert get mad at the family and throw them out, even though it was partially they're own fault as well, given how they somehow weren't able to recognize these people as not being the members of the band that they came to watch perform.
- The bully in the movie’s name is Bull, which is literally just taking out the "y" in "Bully".
- Any attempts at humor are cringeworthy (as previously mentioned in WIS#7), overused and unlike other movies, actually affect the plot. And not in a positive way either, as they almost always end up slowing down the plot or introducing nonsensical plot points rather than even trying to make the film better.
- Speaking of which, its humor doesn't make any sense sometimes. Like when Max mentions he coughed up a hairball, even though he's, you know, a werewolf.
- The message at the end to trust who you are and not care what others say feels like it was just randomly thrown in for the sake of having a lesson. It doesn't help that it's already been in so many movies and pieces of media in general that by now it just feels generic (despite the lesson itself still being an important one to teach kids).
- Despite the film being made in Germany, it tries too hard to appeal to German audiences because of the American-like setting.
- The film has it's many dumb moments, like when Baba Yaga is conjuring her magic on the family and rather than running away to safety they instead stay in the exact spot where the threat is. Or Dracula's plan to turn Earth into the next ice age is completely ludicrous. If his plan did succeeded how would it be possible for him and the other vampires drink human blood if it's all liquid solid. Or even why Dracula owns a jet when he can just fly to his castle in his monstrous bat form.
- The two parents appear to be ok with cheating on each other. We get not only one but three scenes with Dracula wooing Emma, through dances, walks on the moon, and a lot of cuddling and touching each other on the faces. Plus Frank, as Frankenstein's Monster feels no issues with allowing model girls cuddle with him, until an older version of them tries.
- It's incredibly mean spirited towards Emma, accusing her of being nasty when she just wanted to hang out with her family, rather than Fay who abuses and hits her brother and keeps insulting her parents.
- The scene when Max, in werewolf form, getting scooped up in his mother’s arms licking her like a dog would lick an owner which could've been a cheap cute laugh. But the manner that the boy licks his mom doesn’t resemble a dog’s behavior as much as a human licking someone over and over and over until it’s uncomfortable to watch.
Redeeming Qualities
- Whilst unappealing, the animation is pretty well detailed, especially when it comes to the character animation.
- Despite the message being somewhat generic and just being thrown in to give the movie a nice message for the kids, it's still an important one.
- The idea of a family being turned into monsters and having to find a witch to turn back to normal is an interesting concept for a film, despite being executed terribly.
- Some character designs are decent, particularly Max in his monster form.
Reception
Monster Family received mostly negative reviews from audiences and was panned by critics. The film currently has a score of 4.8 on imdb, 57% on Google, and a critic score of 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a audience score of 23% on RT. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic consensus says: "Monster Family promises a family-friendly animated monster mash, but succeeds only in delivering a viewing experience so lackluster that parents may find it genuinely frightening." Despite the backlash, the film got a sequel in 2020, although it was also negatively reviewed.
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