{"id":4000,"date":"2024-09-13T03:59:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T03:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4000"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:00:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:00:57","slug":"the-addams-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/13\/the-addams-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The Addams Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Addams Family<\/strong> (1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Comedy-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (macabre and suggestive humor, some violence, mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Barry Sonnenfeld\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marc Shaiman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Owen Roizman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 22, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, Elizabeth Wilson, Judith Malina, Carel Struycken, Christina Ricci, Jimmy Workman, Dana Ivey, Paul Benedict, Christopher Hart, John Franklin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $113.5M (US)\/$191.5M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0They\u2019re creepy and they\u2019re kooky, mysterious and spooky. They\u2019re altogether ooky. They\u2019re The Addams Family<\/strong>. They\u2019ve made the jump from TV screen to big screen with decidedly mixed results. Much of it is funny. It has some good sight gags and one-liners. The best scenes are self-contained moments like Wednesday Addams (Ricci, Casper) asking a Girl Scout if her cookies are made from real Girl Scouts. In this respect, the movie bears closer resemblance to Charles Addams\u2019 single-panel cartoons that appeared in The New Yorker than the cult 60s TV show. Unfortunately, the movie doesn\u2019t come together as well as one would hope.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The problem with The Addams Family<\/strong> is the plot. I\u2019m not even sure it can be called that it\u2019s so slim. Its sole purpose is to tie together the funny scenes. If it was a clothesline, it would barely hold a light load of laundry. Here\u2019s the story in a nutshell. Some bad people want to get at the Addams\u2019 fortune. They hire a lookalike (Lloyd, Back to the Future) to impersonate long-lost Uncle Fester in order to gain access to the vault. Once there, he starts to feel like one of the family. The masterminds behind the scheme are the Addams\u2019 lawyer (Hedaya, Running Scared) and a loan shark (Wilson, 9 to 5) he owes money to. That\u2019s it. You\u2019d think with all the possibilities presented by the material, the writers could have come up with something better. It doesn\u2019t completely sink The Addams Family<\/strong>; it just causes it to occasionally gasp for air.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m willing to forgive the lackluster script because The Addams Family<\/strong> succeeds in other ways. The inspired casting is definitely at the top of the list. The actors chosen to play the familiar characters are dead-on perfect. Raul Julia (Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Angelica Huston (Prizzi\u2019s Honor) play amorous heads of family Gomez and Morticia. They love each other deeply and express it as only an Addams can. Their words of love include statements like \u201cDon\u2019t torture yourself, Gomez. That\u2019s my job.\u201d and \u201cI would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss.\u201d Ricci just about steals the show as daughter Wednesday with her deadpan line readings. One of my favorite bits is when somebody asks her about her Halloween costume (or seeming lack thereof). Her reply, \u201cI\u2019m a homicidal maniac, they look just like everyone else.\u201d Rounding out the cast is Judith Malina (Awakenings) as Granny Addams, Caleb Struycken (The Witches of Eastwick) as Lurch the butler and newcomer Jimmy Workman as son Pugsley, the target of his older sister\u2019s homicidal urges. In a departure from the series, Lurch never once says \u201cYou rang?\u201d He grunts to show approval or displeasure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You notice I haven\u2019t said a word about Lloyd. I thought I should address his role in The Addams Family<\/strong> separately. SPOILER ALERT! <\/strong>From the start, it\u2019s a given that the real Uncle Fester will return by movie\u2019s end. It should be a major plot development. Instead, it\u2019s handled as an afterthought. The writers could have explained his absence a few different ways. Instead, they go with that oldest and laziest of plot devices, amnesia. I think we all know where I\u2019m going with this, so I\u2019ll say no more about it. I would like to commend Lloyd on yet another memorable performance. He\u2019s a gifted character actor who brings an eccentric sensibility to each role he plays. This quality makes him the ideal choice to step into the role made famous by Jackie Coogan.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Barry Sonnenfeld, a talented cinematographer whose credits include Blood Simple, Raising Arizona and Three O\u2019Clock High, makes his directorial debut with The Addams Family<\/strong>. His distinctive visual style is on display in several scenes like the one in which Gomez and Fester venture into the booby-trapped family vault via a labyrinthine route that includes sliding boards and a gondola river crossing. The special effects involving disembodied hand Thing (magician Hart), a combination live-action and animatronics, are particularly impressive. He no longer emerges from a box; he\u2019s all over the place, running and scurrying about. He has a great bit as a Fed Ex worker delivering packages in an office. The sets are equally great. The Addams\u2019 mansion is more than a museum (when people come to see \u2018em); it\u2019s a funhouse of horrors. Aesthetically, The Addams Family<\/strong> is brilliant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Of all the funny scenes in The Addams Family<\/strong>, the funniest is easily the kids\u2019 school pageant where they perform a scene from Shakespeare involving swordplay and gallons of fake blood showering the horrified parents in the audience. Of course, they get a standing ovation from their family. I laughed often during The Addams Family<\/strong>; I appreciate its dark, morbid sense of humor and oddball cast of characters. It\u2019s too bad Sonnenfeld gave the sparse plot a pass. It could have been great, a classic even. As it stands, it\u2019s an enjoyable movie that doesn\u2019t insult the memory of the TV show from which it\u2019s adapted. The makers get enough right to make it painless which I\u2019m sure is disappointing to Gomez.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Addams Family (1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Comedy-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (macabre and suggestive humor, some violence, mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Barry Sonnenfeld\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marc Shaiman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Owen Roizman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 22, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, Elizabeth Wilson, Judith Malina, Carel Struycken, Christina […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/The-Addams-Family-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4000"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5361,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions\/5361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}