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The Addams Family Values: Goth meets summer camp fun in this engaging comedy
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Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Anjelica Huston (Morticia Addams), Raúl Juliá (Gomez
Addams), Christopher Lloyd (Uncle Fester), Joan Cusack (Debbie Jellinsky),
Christina Ricci (Wednesday Addams), Carol Struycken (Lurch), Jimmy Workman
(Pugsley Addams), Carol Kane (Grandma Addams), David Krumholtz (Joe Glicker),
Peter MacNicol (Gary Granger), Christine Baranski (Becky Martin-Granger)
The Addams Family
was a serviceable family comedy about a bizarre group of Halloween style
characters, who delighted in leading lives of cartoony horror. It drifts along,
and was a big hit, but its sequel Addams
Family Values is several times smarter, more confident and funnier. As a
comedy family saga mixed with cartoon creepiness, it’s hard to beat.
Celebrating the birth of their new child (“He has my
father’s eyes” / “Take those out of his mouth”), Morticia (Anjelica Huston) and
Gomez (Raúl Juliá) hire a new nanny, Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack) to care for
the baby. On her advice, they also decide to send the insanely jealous
Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) to a summer camp –
needless to say they do not fit in with the All-American, Apple-Pie ideals
championed there. Debbie meanwhile has wicked designs on becoming the widow of
their rich Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd).
Addams Family Values
gets a lot of comic juice out of some very witty set-ups. Everyone involved in
the film feels more relaxed and happy to let the comedy breathe. Sonnenfeld
lets the set-ups come naturally and allows the characters to come to the fore.
Every joke in the film comes from watching the characters bounce off their
circumstances. Of course, a lot of this comes from the fact the film doesn’t
need to do any of the heavy lifting of introducing the world or the characters
– it rightly assumes we know what we are getting from the start – but it still
makes the film hugely entertaining.
A lot of the humour comes from the brilliant summer camp
plotline, with its passive-aggressive, jolly-hockey-sticks owners (a very funny
Peter MacNichol and Christine Baranski) and their naked favouritism for the
popular kids. Placing the Addams children into a world of normal teenage
politics and the forced jollity of adults who would rather still be one of the
popular kids at school is a brilliant touch. This clash of values makes for no
end of comic glory, culminating in a disastrous Thanksgiving play, which is a
triumph of the sad and overlooked over the popular kids (because who watching
any film favours the popular kids?).
Christina Ricci is brilliant in this – her deadpan sense of
comic timing is spot-on. Every scene and every one-liner is stand-out. The film
even finds time for a sweetly semi-romantic plotline between her and loser Joe
Glicker (David Kumholtz, also very good as the kind of kid who likes to read A Brief History of Time). Ricci ends up
carrying a lot of the film’s comic material, and she’s so perfect in the role
that to a lot of us she will always be Wednesday Addams, never mind what she does.
The summer camp plotline is so dropdead funny and memorable,
it rather overshadows the film’s actual
plot about Debbie’s attempts to seduce and murder Fester. Sonnenfeld struggles
to make this main plot come to life – his real delight is in the sketch-based
comedy of the summer camp and the Addams’ love for the grotesque and the
extreme. Having said that, Joan Cusack is wickedly sexy and funny as a
heartless social climber.
Anjelica Huston and Raúl Juliá remain divinely perfect as a
couple so besotted they can barely look at each other without bursting into a steamy
tango, or an avalanche of flirtatious foreign language banter. Juliá rips into
the dialogue with a flamboyant gusto, and he’s a perfect foil for Huston’s
supercool, arch one-liners. Sonnenfeld never lets the introduction of a baby
affect their comic darkness in any way, which is a perfect set-up for comedy.
Addams Family Values
is terrific good fun and always keeps you laughing. It’s a load better than the
original, and has some terrific comic set-pieces in. Sure it’s got a pretty
basic plot, but it’s directed with a wicked dryness by Barry Sonnenfeld and its
cast are now completely comfortable in their eccentric characters. The tone
always seems spot-on between the surrealist darkness and the childish,
cartooney horror. It’s a very entertaining film.
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