Addams Family Values (1993)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Joan Cusack

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Now, this is more like it. One doesn’t immediately think of this film in that vaunted pantheon of sequels that far outpaced their predecessor, but this film maintains everything that worked about the first film. The lively performances remain, augmented by the addition of the always-welcome Carol Kane and Joan Cusack. Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia continue to imbue their roles with respectively droll menace and manic energy, that its hard to believe Julia had only a year left to live. The delightfully (if you’ll forgive the expression) kooky production design is here as well and completely undiminished. But this sequel places those parts that worked amidst a story that is far more coherent, and much more adroit in its humor. This is the family Addams perfected. It boggles the mind that—aside from the fact that they are a recognizable property—why they ever tried to go back to this well after this.

Both A and B plots here cover keep things so lively, that I’m not entirely certain which is the A and which is the B. Debbie Jellinsky (Cusack) bringing terror and matrimony in equal measure fuels everything else that happens, but the horror Wednesday (Christina Ricci, who faces the unfortunate reality of making her most iconic impact on cinema before reaching the age of 18) faces at the grim Camp Chippewa could have easily maintained a feature-length runtime on its own merits. 

All this typing about the Addams Family today, and all I want to do is play the pinball machine. I keep thinking I’m above cross-corporate synergy, but tie-ins from the 90s still have the ability to draw my attention. I find it blindingly frustrating I don’t already have that table loaded on to my iPad.

The Addams Family (1991)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. It’s hard to think of this film as marketed to anyone other than children, and I would have been right in the sweet spot for that. How man TV-shows-turned-into-movies did I sit through in the `90s? How many of them were foisted on us by Paramount? I don’t even want to come up with a list.

Did I Like It: Is it possible for a movie to function on just performances and art direction, to the point where its entirely possible there never was a shooting script? I’d say there are about fifteen minutes of plot in the film’s 99 minute runtime, and that quarter of an hour doesn’t quite fit together. I’d dwell more on the question of whether the man played by Christopher Lloyd in this movie truly is Fester Addams, but the movie seems only marginally interested in answering the question, so why should I spend any more time on it?

That might indicate something is rotten at the core of the movie, but wall-to-wall the performances are fantastic. Any time one of these film-based-on-prior-IP, comparisons to the prior performers are natural, but aside from John Astin vs. Raul Julia, is there really any thinking of the cast from the TV show when watching this movie? What’s more, any time some new version of The Addams Family (I’m looking in your direction, the two recent computer-animated fils, which at least appear closer to the original cartoons by Charles Addams in The New Yorker) comes down the pike, are we not comparing those interlopers to the cast assembled here? Huston feels born to play the role in a way not seen before or since, with the possible exception of Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier in X-Men (2000). Although largely a character actor who plays variations on the same theme whether he’s a psychotic cartoon, disgraced nuclear scientist, or a Klingon, Lloyd presents a new energy here. And Christina Ricci makes a compelling case for being the most interesting of the early-90s child stars here, imbibing Wednesday with the right proportions of menace and inquisitiveness. Without those qualities, the film likely would have collapsed in on itself, to say nothing of the eventual sequel.

I guess it is enough for the film to run solely on performance, but they have to be just that good to overcome any other weaknesses.

The Witches (1990)

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Cast: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson

Have I Seen it Before: Many, many times.

Did I Like It: With Jim Henson’s involvement—read, Mr. Henson’s actual involvement before his passing, not just his company—there’s already a certain level of quality delivered. The special effects in this film have aged astonishingly well since release. The creature effects for many of the witches are just as evocative of anything Henson’s company produced in either The Dark Crystal (1982) or Labyrinth (1986). Even the converted children mouse believably talk and interact with their environment. A film like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1989) would make large sprawling sets out of a small world. This one leaves the world as is and builds its impossibilities to scale.

Anjelica Huston swings for the fences, and I cannot readily think of a film where she appears to be having quite as much fun. Even in both of The Addams Family films she is in, there is a pretty heavy layer of irony in her presence. Here, she is the Grand High Witch, and will not be questioned in that capacity.

All of these elements recommend the film, but there is one thing that makes it truly memorable, and keeps me coming back to the film. In it’s opening scenes, Helga (Zetterling) introduces her grandson (Fisher) to the world of witches. She tells the story of her childhood friend, Erica (Elsie Eide) who is captured by a witch, and placed in her father’s prized painting. There, she is doomed to spend the rest of her life looking out at the world passing her by, eventually dying in that painting. What is essentially a children’s film spends its opening minutes remind every child that their future could very well be one of abject futility, punctuated by an anticlimax of a death.

This is before they eliminated Luke’s parents in a car crash. The film is brutal, and I don’t think it gets hardly enough credit for that.

Not a month has gone by in the last thirty years where I have not thought about little Erica at least once. And if you need something more from a horror movie, then you’re simply not getting enough enjoyment out of life.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray

Have I Seen It Before?: Any time I talk about one of my books, I inevitably say something with the syntax of, “Everyone knows (blank) did (blank). What this book presupposes is: Maybe he didn’t?” There were a number of years where I wanted to make films like Wes Anderson makes them.

Yeah, I saw this one on opening weekend.

Did I like it?: Clearly yes. I’ve probably seen the movie a dozen times over the last twenty years, and each time I’m floored by those opposing paintings of a gang of maniacs on dirt bikes. It’s that funny. The rest of the movie is, too.

On this viewing, however, I dug a little deeper. I actually had the screenplay open in front of me, and read along with what played out on the screen. I don’t really recommend doing that, especially if this would be your first viewing of the film. But it was an illuminating way to see it. For all of his well-earned reputation as a visual stylist, Wes Anderson (still working here with Owen Wilson, who really should be writing more, if these early Anderson films were any indication) is also an immaculate writer. It’s hard to conceive of a film where Bill Murray’s improvisational skills don’t make up the lion’s share of his screen time, but I can attest that Raleigh St. Clair appears almost entirely as he does on the page.

The story is pristine as well. There are few movies that truck with voice over narration as much as this one does and still feels like a movie and not an audio book. I was struck by how my memory seemed to think that Alec Baldwin’s narration was spread throughout the film, but really only appears in the first half an hour and then in the last few minutes. The screenplay makes the case for its characters so cogently, that even if I wasn’t giggling throughout, it would have been a film that stuck with me.

Anderson may be the only kind of director who can get away with that.