Monster Family
Monster Family (also known as Happy Family) is a 2017 computer-animated monster comedy film directed and produced by Holger Tappe, and co-written by David Safier. It is based on David Safier's 2011 novel Happy Family. The film stars Emily Watson, Nick Frost, Jessica Brown Findlay, Celia Imrie, Catherine Tate, and Jason Isaacs.[2][3][4]
Monster family
In Transylvania, Count Dracula laments about his loneliness with his three bat servants. He receives a phone call from Emma Wishbone, who has mistakenly called him instead of a monster costume store. She talks to him briefly before accidentally dropping her cell phone down a storm drain. Emma is depressed as family tensions build up - her own bookstore is in dire financial straits, her son Max is a victim of bullying due to his awkward and stereotypical mannerisms, her daughter Fay is a narcissistic teenager, and her husband Frank is overworked and sleep-deprived, neglecting her. Dracula decides to make Emma his new bride, and persuades Baba Yaga to curse her and turn her into a real vampire so she will stay with him.
Her new-age friend Cheyenne gives Emma some tickets to a costume party, and Emma makes costumes for Emma's family: She as a vampire, Frank as Frankenstein's monster, Fay as a mummy, and Max as a werewolf. Due to a mix-up at the party, they are thrown out by security, causing Emma to have a breakdown. Baba Yaga takes advantage of the situation and curses her, but as her entire family were unhappy, they are all cursed and transform into the monsters they dressed up as.
At the airport Fay hypnotizes a check-in clerk to allow them to fly, but during the flight Emma is overwhelmed by vampiric bloodlust, and only a timely intervention from Dracula halts this and he absconds with the confused and blood-hungry Emma aboard his personal jet leaving her family on the passenger plane.
Dracula tries to persuade Emma to stay with him, and although tempted she decides to be loyal to her family - causing Dracula to eject her from his plane where she lands next to the London Eye just as her family arrive. Meanwhile Dracula decides that if he cannot have Emma, nobody can, and instructs his hunchback servant Renfield to prepare a snowflake machine to destroy the world in retaliation.
Baba Yaga charges her amulet but is accosted by the Wishbones, however she sends them to Egypt. Cheyenne tries to help, but after rescuing Baba Yaga from falling to her death the two become friends. Baba Yaga explains that Dracula intended for her to curse only Emma, but the entire family's unhappiness caused them all to change - only the entire family being happy will break the curse.
In Egypt, the family has another argument culminating in them all walking off in different directions: Fay meets Imhotep who believes her to be beautiful, and wants to take over the world with her help. Max finds a hotel where all the guests are scared of him, and Frank rescues a group of supermodels who take him back to their hotel - the same one Max is at.
Emma is once again consumed by bloodlust, and once again rescued by Dracula. Despite being tempted by him again she still misses her family, who appears in the castle after a repentant Baba Yaga transports them there. Renfield explains Dracula's plan to shoot a giant snowball into the Sun, killing all life apart from vampires who do not need the sun to survive. While Dracula is in his Lazarus pool which ensures his youth, the family plans to add holy water to it, killing him, but he overpowers them. Realizing they need to work together and are happy to be together the curse is broken and they all turn back to human form. With the help of Renfield and the servant bats they trap Dracula between beams of sunlight and freeze him with his snowflake weapon.
The Wishbones return home, and their circumstances change. Frank stands up for himself at work after putting a photo of their family adventure and the frozen Dracula on his desk, Max's bully has realised the error of his ways and befriends him, and Fay meets a nerd in a knight's costume at a costume party that Emma throws at home. Baba Yaga, Renfield, and the three bats crash the party. The family takes another photo together, showing their happiness.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 10% based on 21 reviews, and an average rating of 3.40/10. The critical consensus reads: "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."[5]
Parents need to know that while Monster Family professes to emphasize the value of family above all else, this messy animated feature often makes no real sense. Cartoon violence and the general threat of world annihilation by a sulky and lovelorn Dracula drive the action. So does his seeming longing for romance and lust for an annoying mortal. This makes it difficult to tell what age audience the filmmakers are aiming for. This may be because the book it was based on, Happy Family by David Safier, has erotic scenes that had to be cut to conform to PG rating requirements. A character frequently passes gas, seen as a green mist that clears the room upon arrival. Language includes "hell." Bullies dunk a smart kid in the toilet at school. His older sister constantly hits and kicks him. Vampires view humans as blood dispensers. Bikini-clad models inexplicably fawn over a creature who looks like Frankenstein's monster. One woman starts massaging his green bare back suggestively. A pharaoh threatens to force a girl to be his for eternity. Dracula dances a suggestive tango with an unwilling partner.
In MONSTER FAMILY, a love-deprived Dracula (Jason Isaacs) becomes obsessed with Emma (Emily Watson), mother of two and wife to a workaholic office nerd (Nick Frost). Sucking her blood will sap her of the soul he claims to adore, so Dracula offers the backwards-talking witch he's imprisoned (Catherine Tate) her freedom if she can turn Emma into a vampire, which will help him woo her. Apparently, this will only work if she's unhappy. Fortunately, family life has sapped all the joy out of Emma. The witch transforms Emma into a vampire, but also her son Max (Ethan Rouse) into a werewolf, her daughter Fay (Jessica Brown Findlay) into a mummy, and her husband into an unintelligible Frankenstein monster. Dracula kidnaps Emma but she insists on going back to the family she claims to love. Dracula vows that if he can't have love, no one else will, and he plots to cool the sun and freeze the earth into an uninhabitable glacier where only vampires can exist. As Emma and the family press the witch to turn them back into their old selves, the witch explains to someone else that they themselves are capable of turning themselves back into normal humans, but only, as the witch suggests, "when happy they are." Differences fade as family members realize they do love each other.
Like many animated movies for kids, this one creates a universe with fantasy rules, but so many of the stated rules are later contradicted here that a confusing and irritating mess results. The action seems to be set in New York. So why do all the Wishbones speak with British accents? Suddenly the action is clearly in London. Huh? "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Huh? Emma seems like a loving if frustrated and overworked mom who wishes her husband wouldn't stay so late at work and that her teenage daughter was less critical. But later in the film, when the plot hangs on the family being seriously unhappy, suddenly Emma starts barking at everyone, blaming, issuing absurd and militant ultimatums and, finally, just sending everyone away. Huh? An ancient spirit tells Fay she is beautiful, and when she refuses to go off and rule the world with him, he tells her that, in fact, she's ugly. Which is it? Dracula is supposed to have no power when he is recharging in his bath, yet he manages to shoot a pill through gallons of water straight into the mouth of a woman trying to destroy him before she can accomplish her mission. So is he powerless in the bath, or not?
In this extremely annoying vein, the family finally comes together in a fest of love, and that moment is memorialized in a photograph that later sits on Dad's desk. Since everyone present was in the photograph, the question is: Who took it? By Monster Family's end, no one will care.
Emma and her family are down on their luck. After Dracula has a witch cast a spell on her and her family, they're turned into monsters. In order to reverse it, Emma and her family must be happy- which proves to be difficult.
The film begins in Transylvania, where Count Dracula laments about his loneliness with his three bat servants. Suddenly, he receives a phone call from Emma Wishbone, who has mistakenly called him instead of a monster costume store. Rotten luck bedevils Emma until she reaches her bookstore, where she complains to her co-worker Cheyenne of all the troubles plaguing her family:
Seeking to foster a sense of family, Emma makes a handful of monster costumes for her family - her as a vampire, Frank as Frankenstein's monster, Fay as a mummy, and Max as a werewolf - to wear to a monster-themed costume party presented by Cheyenne. Though the family is clearly not in the mood for such an outing, they nevertheless reach their destination. They unexpectedly receive a star treatment only to discover that they have been mistaken for a monster-themed rock-and-roll band that was meant to perform at the party. Security guards deposit the family into the alleyway behind the building, where Emma finally snaps.
The bad evening only grows worse when Baba Yaga arrives to turn Emma into a vampire with a transformative curse. The spell works, but unexpectedly turns the rest of the family into the monsters they were portraying. Enraged, Emma chases down Baba Yaga while her family splits up to visit various spots around the city. Fay goes to her crush's house only to be rejected due to her appearance while Max stalks and scares the school bully. Emma eventually captures Baba Yaga and demands to have her family returned to normal only to discover the old witch's amulet - the source of her power - has worn out and must be recharged at the London Eye. 041b061a72