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.
Monstrous Qualities
- The main problem with this movie is that it's based on a book, Happy Family, that received mixed reviews and ultimately suffers from the same flaws as the movie itself, which could be considered a red flag and since it was written by the author of the book, it explains why the poor quality overall.
- The Wishbones aren't very enjoyable main characters as they mostly just argue with each other and later, flat-out ditch each other in Egypt.
- Emma is a Mary Sue who becomes extremely angry during moments of the film for many minor reasons, mainly to Frank.
- Frank is an almost pointless dad character who farts all the time and also becomes extremely dumb as a Frankenstein (notably adding "M" to the beginning of his words).
- Max is mainly just used to move the plot along and he suddenly acts like a dog after becoming a werewolf, which is distracting and weird considering he treats it like it's normal.
- Faye is the worst of the family, as she constantly argues and yells at her mother, as well as being extremely cliche in both dialogue and goals.
- The movie has a poor grasp on monster legends, such as saying that mummies can hypnotize people or that vampires can walk out into the sun if they have a soul.
- Essentially the entire movie happens because Emma accidentally called Dracula while searching for a costume store, which is a ridiculous idea as it is.
- While Dracula started out as an interesting character, he ultimately ends up being a creepy stalker obsessed with Emma before becoming a generic doomsday villain who wanted to end all life on Earth simply because Emma rejected him, which is poor characterization and makes him come off as a generally weak villain, with his motive being to find love which is very cliche and predictable, but later becomes creepy later in the film as already mentioned.
- The humor in the film mainly amounts to toilet humor, like the aforementioned fart gag or a scene where one bat sneezes a lot of snot on another, or slapstick that feels out of place at times due to the style of the film.
- While the animation is fine for the most part, there are many moments where the animation for the characters is pretty stiff.
- The film gets many cultural facts incorrect, such as the backstory of the London Eye or how Mummies are mummified.
- The film is known to be rather mean-spirited most of the time, since aside from the main characters being harsh towards each other, most of the other characters aren't any better as they beat down on him and treat them very poorly, with one example being with the audience when the family is playing instruments very badly and they start booing at them even though they got confused and thought it was a costume party, and the family get harshly kicked out even though they let them in the first place.
- Another example is Max getting bullied at school by an unknown bully sterotype by trying to shove him into a toilet.
- There's also a scene where Frank is at work and he is scalded by his co-workers and boss for sleeping despite them being the ones forcing him to overwork, which is the reason why he hasn't slept at all, and later farts two times in that same scene.
- As already mentioned, The Wishbone family constantly argue with each other and always fight and getting angry with one another over the pettist things, and treat both Frank and Max as massive punching bags, which is very similar to the Griffin family in the newer seasons of Family Guy who act very similarly to each other and often abuse one of their family members for no reason (Frank and Max for the Wishbones, and Stewie and Meg for the Griffins).
- The setting of the film contradicts the actual characters, as everyone in the movie has a British accent, yet they are from America.
- The relationship between Faye and Imhotep is rather uncomfortable since Imhotep is thousands of years older than her, thankfully it doesn't last long.
- On the note of Imhotep, he comes out of nowhere in the film and is ultimately forgotten about.
- There are a good amount of obvious and confusing plot holes that are worth pointing out.
- Why was nobody at the party wearing costumes when the flier said that it was a costume party?
- Why couldn't Baba Yaga defeat Dracula or summon the ingredients for Holy Water in the first place?
- How was the embalming fluid on Faye at all if it came from magic? And how was it still intact?
- During the fight between Frank and Imhotep, why didn't Imhotep change into sand to defeat Frank?
- Why does Dracula have windows in his lair if sunlight hurts him?
- Renfield and the Bats' redemption is kinda out of place since they were still willing to assist Dracula up to the third act for no reason.
- On the subject of Renfield, his voice is rather unfitting since he is a small, troll-like hunchback while his voice is that of an old British gentleman.
- Poor lip-syncing, as the characters' mouths rarely move at times and don't match any of their dialogue they've spoken, and is extremely noticeable during the first half of the film, mostly due to the film originally being created in Germany and being poorly dubbed into English by Sky, which explains why this is a problem.
- It steals elements from other animated films, such as The Incredibles (the family conflict, the family having their own powers and the husband being a workaholic), Hotel Transylvania (the usage of monster legends, monsters falling in love with humans (with Dracula's goal of marrying Emma) and Dracula's hatred for humans) and many other films like The Mummy, that heavily make this film seem very outdated at the time of it's release and even today.
- It also uses cliches like the dance-party ending and the third act breakup moment that have been used in many films before, and have been done much better overall.
- It also uses the song Happy by Pharrell Williams, which was meant for the film Despicable Me 2 and played an important role in that film's story as Gru's happy arc after he's fallen in love with Lucy, whereas this film uses the song for the dance party ending, which is misfitting mostly due to how slow the scene is in general.
- Baba Yaga's voice is extremely annoying and unbearable to listen through, as Catherine Tate does a poor job at voicing her since she's trying to do a German accent and speak like a witch at the same time, but it sounds way too fake and high-pitched, and it sounds way too similar to Jar Jar Binks and Fleabag Monkeyface.
- It gained a sequel, which didn't improve much from the first film and still suffered from the same problems as per usual, though it was considered to be a tiny bit of an improvement over the first film but not by much however and still received mostly negative reviews like last time.
- There are zero morals nor life-lessons that the movies teaches to it's audience unlike most kids movies, as the only one that can be classified as one is the moral of "The Importance of Families" which is very cliched and has been used in numerous other films, and is later contradicted with the film's sequel where Faye is still bullying her brother and is still arguing with her parents over nothing, which prevents this film from being either relatable or clever in the slightest, very similarly to most Bargain Bin animated movies out there.
- The soundtrack is mostly nothing but generic kids movie music, with the usage of pop songs and an orchestral score that aren't very memorable and come off as mostly forgettable and bland for the most part, with the expectation of Happy by Pharrell Williams.
- The Bats are annoying and unfunny comic relief characters that are only used for slapstick purposes and were only put into the movie to cash in onto the success of the Minions from Despicable Me, which is very clear since both of them have very similar behaviour and personalities and are goofy henchman to an evil villain (The Bats to Dracula, and the Minions to Gru), whereas the Minions are a lot more funnier and have a lot of charm, meanwhile the Bats on the other hand are just irritating and cringeworthy due to poor writing and weak material overall.
- What also makes the Minions comparison more obvious is that there are three bats with a Large one, a Medium one and a Small one, which is very similar to Kevin, Stuart and Bob from the Minions duology, spin-off movies from the Despicable Me franchises, which proves even further that these characters are obvious Minion clones without their charm or likability in the slightest.
Good Qualities
- The concept of a normal family being turned into monsters on Halloween is a cool idea, despite it's poor execution.
- The Wishbones do learn their lesson by the end.
- Frank is considered the most likable of the Wishbones, mostly out of sympathy for how he's treated.
- The character designs are impressive and have plenty of detailed characteristics.
- It is faithful to the book it's based on, even if both of them are pretty mediocre products.
- The animation (as stated in MQ#6) is fine for the most part, especially during chase and fight scenes.
- The voice acting is pretty good (aside from Baba Yaga's), particularly Emily Watson as Emma Wishbone and Jason Isaacs as Dracula.
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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