Family Matters: 12 Unusual Film Families

Although John Bennett (Mark Walhberg) and his childhood teddy bear Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) are not technically brothers, they are the only family each other has. In honor of the upcoming sequel ‘Ted 2,’ we decided to take a look back at the most unusual film families of all time including the Addams, the Burnhams, the Fockers and the Stewarts.

“They’re creepy, and they’re kooky/Mysterious and spooky/They’re all together ooky/the Addams Family.” Those opening lyrics to the classic TV series that the film franchise was based on, pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this eccentric family’s two cinematic appearances.

While we met male nurse Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) in ‘Meet the Parents,’ it wasn’t until the 2004 sequel that we were introduced to his parents, Rosalind and Bernard Focker (Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman). Robert De Niro’s Jack Byrnes finally meets his match when he encounters his future in-laws played by the two fellow Oscar winners.

There has never been a more dangerous on-screen couple than John and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt). While the couple did have some personal issues to work out, by the end of the film they were back together kicking ass!

In the Cortez family, the kids play just as important a role as the adults. After saving their spy parents in the first movie, Carmen and Juni Cortez (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara) eventually become accomplished spies in their own right, along with the help of their uncle, Isador ”Machete” Cortez (Danny Trejo).

Probably the most disturbed family in cinematic history, members of the Sawyer clan terrorized movie audiences for decades in the Texas Chain Saw Massacre movies, and the franchise changed the way people look at power tools forever!

Family is important even to ghosts, which we learned from the 2001 horror classic starring Nicole Kidman as matriarch Grace Stewart. While Grace may not know at first that she and her children are no longer living, she’ll stop at nothing to keep them safe and reveal the truth about their situation.

If we learned anything from director M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 science fiction thriller Signs it’s that an alien invasion can bring a family closer together and restore a priest’s lost faith. That’s exactly what happened to Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), and Graham’s children Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin), when they survived a close encounter with an H2O-allergic extraterrestrial.

While the true comic book parentage of the Maximoff twins is never revealed in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ for legal reasons – ‘X-Men’ villain Magneto is actually their father – Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) make the perfect additions to this superhero team-up.

Spoiled and dopey adult children Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly), who both still live with their single parents, have to learn to live together as stepbrothers when their parents get married. Cue the vulgar hilarity.

Produced by Wes Anderson and written and directed by Noah Baumbach, this family drama tells the semiautobiographical story of how two brothers growing up in 1980s Brooklyn deal with the news that their parents (Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney) are getting divorced. Hint, not well: Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) claims to have written Pink Floyd’s “Hey You,” while Frank (Owen Kline) masturbates in public.

What would you do if your nine-year-old told you that he can “see dead people?” Well, it’s difficult for Lynn Sear (Toni Collette) to accept in ‘The Sixth Sense,’ but thanks to the help of a child psychologist (Bruce Willis), she eventually does. However, young Cole’s (Haley Joel Osment) special gift is also a blessing, as it allowed Lynn to reunite with her deceased mother and bring the Sear family closer together.

In ‘American Beauty,’ Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) begins to question his own existence and then proceeds to quit his job, smoke pot and flirt with teenage girls. With his feelings for his materialistic wife (Annette Bening) fading, his affections move towards a seemingly perfect high school cheerleader named Angela (Mena Suvari), who is the best friend of Lester’s insecure daughter, Jane (Thora Birch).