MaximumMadness
Two years after successfully returning to the focus of pop-culture with a thrilling and amusing big-budget Hollywood remake, that delightfully creepy and kooky family we all know, love and fear is back in "Addams Family Values", once again directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Inspired by the delightfully dreary comics of series creator Charles Addams while taking plenty of inspiration from the classic 60's sitcom, I was a pretty big fan of the first "Addams Family" film. It was the rare revival that paid loving respect to what came before without feeling the need to satirize or talk down to the source material. But for my money, this 1993 follow-up is in every way a superior sequel. It raises the stakes. It piles on the laughs. And it finds the perfect balance between story and humor.The Addams Family gets a little bigger and crazier when Morticia (Anjelica Huston) gives birth to their newest addition- a bouncy baby boy named "Pubert." However, this doesn't sit well with siblings Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), whom see their new brother as competition. In order to quell the growing rivalry between the children, Morticia and Gomez (Raul Julia) hire on a new nanny to watch after them. However, they are unaware that the attractive Debbie (Joan Cusack) is actually a serial killer known as the "Black Widow", with a penchant for marrying older men and then bumping them off for their money. And she has her sights set on Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) and his enormous wealth!The thing I really admire about this film is how well it balances the ratio of story to humor and how the structure of the film is built for maximum effectiveness. A great part of the fun of the "Addams Family" concept is the fact that most of the humor comes from the contrast between their inherent insanity and typical middle and upper-class values. It's an idea built around subversion. And I think this film handles that very well by wisely dividing the story into three sort- of episodic adventures that place members of the clan in different situations. Those of course being the archetypal rivalry between siblings, a subsequent subplot involving Wednesday and Pugsley being sent to summer camp, and the overarching storyline about the deadly romance that forms between Debbie and Fester and how it affects the family as a whole. It creates opportunities to organically unleash the Addams' onto the world for comedic effect, and I found it functioned quite a bit better than the loose narrative of the original.Once again, the wild and wonderful ensemble cast shines through as the highlight of the film, and I like the fact that the movie shifts focus onto members of the family who weren't featured quite as heavily in the previous outing. The standouts here being the delightfully deadpan Ricci and amusingly mindless Workman as Wednesday and Pugsley, whose plot lines make up a good bulk of the film. There's a definite theme of youth in the movie, so it makes sense for the children to take the center stage, and both do very well with the material. Lloyd is as fun as ever as the hapless Fester, and it's fun seeing him try to cope with his general cluelessness when it comes to women and romance. Julia and Huston are as deliciously hammy as ever as the psychotic lovers that are Gomez and Morticia. And I really loved Cusack in her scene- stealing performance as the devious diva that is Debbie. Bonus points go to Carole Kane whom takes over the role of "Grandmama" with gusto and a young David Krumholtz as the neurotic Joel- a fellow camper who develops feelings for Wednesday.Also a step-up is the wondrous production assembled by Sonnenfeld and the twisted and hilarious script by playwright Paul Rudnick. The film is an aesthetic powerhouse with sharp, keen visuals and a brutally manic pace that lends itself exceptionally well to the material. Sonnenfeld injects such a sheer, voracious sense of spunk and fun into his visual storytelling that it's just infectious. You can't help but feel completely satisfied by the time the credits roll, and you feel like everyone put their hearts into the film. And the script is just fantastic. Almost every other line is punctuated by a clever gag, the pitch-black humor is out full force, and there's some really smart satire injected beneath the surface. You really couldn't ask for more out of an Addams story.Were I to point out any flaws, it's the fact that the movie makes one critical error that I can't help but notice. That being that once again, and despite the rampant creativity otherwise... the film is essentially built around a plot involving Fester and an attempt at extorting money from the family. Fester's plot-line is basically exactly the same as the first movie. Everything else is fresh and new... So why just regurgitate an almost identical plot-thread?Thankfully the film's grand humor, outstanding performances and wild visuals more than make up for this admittedly major flaw. 1991's "The Addams Family" was a solid and satisfying revisit to a cherished old property. But 1993's "Addams Family Values" sees that concept and one-ups it by improving over what came before in virtually every way. It's tighter. It's funnier. It's crazier. And indeed... it's kookier. This is one family reunion you'll want to revisit over and over again. And so, I give "Addams Family Values" an excellent 9 out of 10! A superior sequel in every way.
ElMaruecan82
I said about the first film that Barry Levinson understood the Addams, not the audience. The look was there but the plot involving Uncle Fester's introduction to the Family to serve some malevolent business scheme didn't exploit the comedic potential of the Family to its fullest, and for a simple reason: the undercover uncle was as weird and wacky as everyone else and once we get immersed in the Addams' inner circle, no matter how bizarrely sinister it gets, we become immune to the effect of surprise and mildly smirk when we should be laughing.Now, this is a critic I can't formulate about the 1993 sequel "The Addams Family's Values", I think it's fair to say that Barry Levinson understood the audience… this time. Naturally, one glimpse at the poster, the cast and the first frames give us an idea. Everybody's there and the two-year gap between didn't affect anyone physically but there are significant newcomers, a baby and a bride, and these are not benign events in any family history. So the film remarkably confronts the Addams to the real world through real-life situations and instead of relying on a one-joke "Addams vs. Reality" note, it takes all the characters out of their zone of comfort and center their preoccupations on the basis of three story lines: we have the new baby, Fester's courtship, marriage and deadly honeymoon and the summer camp.But let's get to the film. It opens in a very straightforward way, Morticia Addams (Anjelica Huston) feels the sudden urge to go to the hospital as she will have a baby… we've seen more passionate displays of starting labors, but hey, this is Morticia. And the labor is as hard and painful as it can get, and you can tell because she enjoys every minute of it. Then comes the baby, and when asked about, a joyful Gomez (Raul Julia) proudly shouts "it's an Addams" and seeing is believing: the baby is the spitting image of his father, as if he was designed by a doll maker... with the obligatory pencil-mustache. Of course, he needs a name, and if you ask yourself what can be worse than Wednesday or Pugsley, well, let's just say parents were sued for lesser names than… Pubert.But here's where the film starts to show signs of improvements over the original: while the baby's birth could have been the inspiration for a few sight gags (there are some reminiscences of the first film with Wednesday and Pugsley trying to kill him), this is only a set-up, one thing leading to another, the baby brings the second newcomer, inevitably, a nanny Debbie (Joan Cusack), a beautiful blonde too fond on Pubert not to raise any suspicion. It is even fishier that she gets infatuated with Fester, and then we remember that he's a rich man and she seems to carry all the symptoms of the Black Widow. But here's the plot thickens, in order to keep on her 'nanny' cover, she needs get rid of the kids and convince the parents to take them to summer camp so they can repress their homicidal impulses.The film isn't funny all the time but you the dynamics work and makes it exciting to follow, it follows the rule that a good story with a few gags is better than a disjointed plot that tries too hard to be funny. And it dares not to focus on the Addams, Fester has never been my favorite character but his interactions with a woman he genuinely loves and who pretends to be attracted to him gives him a touch of vulnerability, and it enriches his relationship with Gomez and Morticia too, who still remain the romantic pillar of the Family. But just when you get too much on Fester, the film quickly jumps to the other subplot. And both are actually similar, you have a seemingly normal person who must pretend to love an Addams, while the Addams kids must adapt to the normal world, the worst, one that advocates such values as friendship, love and solidarity. Ugh!And this is why my favorite part is the Chipawe summer camp. Indeed, with the syrupy leaders played by Peter MacNicol and Christine Baranski and the perfect little Daddy and Mommy's little girl, the Addams kids discover a real world which is do diametrically opposed to theirs that it is scary in its own joyful way, a bit like Debbie can be creepy behind her angelic smile. In the camp, there's another outsider Joel Glicker, a Jewish nerd allergic to everything (before it would become a cliché) and somewhat, the story manages to make the chemistry work between Joel and Wednesday, and their surrender to the saccharine tyranny believable (who can resists hours of "Sound of Music"?). There's also a very clever part showing all the kids who couldn't make it in the Pocahontas play, and the way their ethnic backgrounds play is a delight of politically incorrect humor.The power of the first two acts is to consolidate the Addams' status as outcasts no matter how hard they try to fit. And it all comes to a point where we want the Addams to be back to their 'normal' abnormal lifestyle, (or form for one of them), like the title says, the Addams have values, twisted and weird, but values nonetheless. The only sad aspect is to see Raul Julia in such energy and enthusiasm in a movie made one year before its untimely passing. And it's so sweet to see a young Cristina Ricci with her creepy smile closing the film, illustrating this bizarre mix of macabre and humor.The movie ends in the perfect note except maybe for the dreadful ending son, one that manages to get more horrific than the first one. Since the script transcended the sitcom format, how about a little nod with the usual da-da-da, and the two finger snaps.
Mr-Fusion
The one gripe (if you can even call it that) I have with "Addams Family Values" is the end credits song. Tag Team doesn't work anywhere near as well as MC Hammer did. But everything else here works wonderfully.More than the first, this is the epitome of a real-life cartoon, not to mention a refined one-liner assembly line. And the perfect casting extends to the supporting players (Joan Cusack and deranged Christine Baranski). But, for me, Christina Ricci owns this movie (this from a pretty big Raúl Juliá fan) with little more than facial expressions, from annoyance and disgust to unbalanced perkiness. Ricci's working with a much more experienced group of players, which really emphasizes her talent here. She's mastered this character. Her sabotaging the Summer camp pageant is the best part of the whole thing, and I'll be damned if she's not my favorite Pocahontas.This movie's a winner, on par with (if not better than) the original. With a cast like this, it's hard to see it turning out poorly, but refreshing that it's anything but.8/10
