The Addams Family *snap snap*

The Addams Family is the penultimate Gothic-horror comedy, a must watch during the Halloween season.  The two movies produced in the early ‘90s that were directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, The Addams Family and The Addams Family Values, relaunched the popularity of this lively (and sometimes deathly) family for the following decade.  Though the magazine cartoonist Charles Addams, who originated the Addams, had continued to create comics featuring them for The New Yorker since the late ‘30s til his death in 1988, the Addams Family had pretty much been forgotten since the run of the classic tv show of the ‘60s.  The ‘90s movies were mainly based off of the tv show’s version of the family, but was even heavier on the macabre and dry sinister humor, much like the original cartoons. 

Of course a movie is only as good as its actors, and The Addams Family featured a superb group of them, including Anjelica Huston as Morticia, Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester, and Christina Ricci as Wednesday.  I wouldn’t say Huston’s Morticia was as beautiful and lovely and as typical housewifey as Carolyn Jones from the ‘60s show, but she did play the role beautifully as a quiet seductress with quick wit.  Also, the best part of her role was how she always had a beam of light laid across her eyes in dark shots.  Amazing.  And for Ms. Ricci, this is my favorite role of hers.  In every other incarnation of Wednesday I’ve seen, she is always displayed as a typically sweet little girl or a little brash, but Ricci really made this Wednesday child full of woe with her fearlessness and her immense sarcasm.  And Christopher Lloyd… well he’s always been wacky enough that him playing the intensely foul and weird Uncle Fester is no great shocker. 

The great thing about the two movies is that the sequel is one of rare breed of sequels when it is equally good as or even better than the first.  I know I surely enjoy The Addams Family Values more than it’s predecessor.  Though both movies focus mainly on events involving Uncle Fester, I find the second movie includes more plotlines for all the characters, and it’s just funnier.  Wednesday and Pugsleys’ enforcement at the summer camp alongside the wackadoo camp counselors and stuck-up prep kids always guarantees laughs, and Joan Cusack’s role as Fester’s gold-digging psychotic killer love interest Debbie is cool, calculating, and perfectly crazy.  Add in stale sex talk, a Satan hand pupper, and fail murder attempts, and you have all the ingredients for genius! 

If you haven’t seen the movies before you should now, because if you don’t then you’re a loser because these movies are awesome and everyone knows it.

For more info on these movies, click on the links below:
The Addams Family: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101272/
The Addams Family Values: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106220/