Possibly one of the most hyped movies, though not for good reasons, is Rob Zombies version of “The Munsters”. From the first trailer drop which might go down as one of the worst trailers this decade, fans were up in arms against each other on if this had any hopes of being good. Sadly, it isn’t.
Starting off as almost a prequel we see Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) who is desperate for love follow her fathers advice, The Count (Daniel Roebuck), and embarks on some bad blind dates. That is though until she meets recently deceased Shecky Von Rathbone (Jeff Daniel Phillips) who now goes by the name Herman Munster. From here we follow their worldly adventures until they eventually find their home on Mockingbird Lane.
As for a story here there is barely any at all. After we get their love story out of the way we get a small side story involving them losing their house due to Lily’s brother Lester the werewolf (Tomas Boykin) but even then there is no ups and downs in this story at all. It seems like just an excuse for Zombie to push them to Mockingbird Lane and introduce lesser known side characters from the original show.
Running as a sitcom aspect instead of having a story in this feature length film feels even more odd considering the movie is on the longer side at just under 2 hours. It drags along dropping us in situation after situation. Having no real story structure to move us along this run time instead relying on endless gags which never hit soon grows extremely tiresome.
This strange mixture flows over to the characters as well. Sheri emulates Yvonne De Carlo performance as Lily quite well. However Herman and The Count seem to be completely different versions here. Herman ends up being a goofy dumb one line machine who seems hell bent on humor that falls flat at every available moment.
Its clear though that Zombie does have a love for The Munsters. The film is visually usually very appealing with bright colors, beautiful set designs, and quirky details scattered throughout. Costumes designs and the characters themselves look good and at times even goofy.
Sadly though the fact that the movie overstays its welcome. Having almost no story and just bouncing from set piece to set piece with horrible writing that never delivers a joke that lands hurts this a lot. Zombie can throw all the love he wanted into this but with better writing and maybe making this into a short limited tv run he could have had a hit. Instead we get one of 2022s biggest misses.
Score :
1 / 5
