Addams Family Values

“Isn’t he a lady killer!” the beautiful young nanny says when she first meets Fester, the long-lost brother in the Addams Family.

“Acquitted,” Gomez corrects.

We are back again in the insane house of the Addams family, who find comfort in fighting, cheer in sadness, pride in boasting that their little son has been given probation. They live in a onejoke universe, arrived at by accepting the mirror images of all respectable values. Roger Ebert admitted in his review, “But the good news is, this time I found the joke funnier than in the original "The Addams Family" (1991).”

It’s the rare sequel that is better than the first one, and yet “Addams Family Values” is one of them. Nothing much appears to have changed. The actors are about the same, the director is still Barry Sonnenfeld, the Addams house still towers above a horrible upland, next to a graveyard. Ebert admitted, “Maybe I liked it more than the original because I was in a different mood? Perhaps, knowing I was going to see twee little MacAulay Culkin in "The Nutcracker" right after seeing this film, I was in the mood for macabre bad taste? Or perhaps the screenplay, by Paul Rudnick, contains more invention than the 1991 effort.” “Addams Family Values” involves not one but three subplots, all of them funny and one of them (about the birth of a new baby boy) the source of one great joke after another. “I’m going to have a baby,” Morticia (Anjelica Huston) tells Gomez (Raul Julia). “Right now.” In an unavoidable twist on the usual movie childbirth scene, she’s in pain in the delivery room – and loving every moment of it.

The newborn son, named Pubert, played by Kaitlyn and Kristen Hooper, sure does look like his dad. Even to the pencil mustache. “He has my father’s eyes,” Gomez murmurs. “Take them out of the baby’s mouth!” Morticia demands. The older Addams children, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), are completely jealous, and even try to decapitate the baby on the guillotine that is conveniently in the baseman.

The demand for a nanny is clearly required, and the family hires Debbie Jelinsky, played by Joan Cusack, who arrives in a low-cut outfit, and takes the job. Nothing in the house seems to bother her, not even the unexpected arrival of Thing (Christopher Hart), a disembodied hand that jumps on her shoulder. She’s not worried: “I’m good with my hands.” Debbie is revealed to have her eye on the gullible Fester, reprised by Christopher Lloyd, the long-lost Addams brother whose reappearance gave most of the story in the first movie. After all, he is one of the richest men in the world, along with maybe being the ugliest. Trying to get the older children out of the way, she convinces Morticia and Gomez to send them to summer camp, where they do not, it goes without say, fit right in. Then Wednesday meets her first boyfriend, played by David Krumholtz, and there is little doubt they were, evidently, made for one another.

What is most charming about “Addams Family Values” is the way the relationship between Gomez and Morticia has strengthened. Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston are given a lot of one-liners and payoff quips, obviously, but what’s funny is what comes in between – the real love where they embrace each other, and the way they enjoy their unspeakable lifestyle. Speaking English is not enough to reveal how they feel. They start speaking French and Spanish, the languages of romance, to reflect the happiness they feel, living at the center of a nightmare.

Joan Cusack, a natural comedian, makes a good addition to the cast. “I just adore little babies,” she says, looking at Pubert. “I just want to grab them and squeeze them until there’s not a breath left in their tiny little bodies.” Her attempts to attract Fester away from the family tomb and into a more comfortable lifestyle led to one of Huston’s great lines, when she visits Fester’s new place. She doesn’t mind that he is miserable and unhappy, the prisoner of a gold-digging jerk, but… “the décor, Fester! Pastel?” Ebert admitted, “Of the previous film, I said, probably unfairly, that it so closely resembled Charles Addams' original New Yorker cartoons that the art direction must have been a cut-and-paste job. Looking more thoughtfully at "Addams Family Values," I no longer agree.” Addams in his cartoons made one of the most easily recognizable imaginary worlds of the century, but the achievement of this film is to make it solid, to put the family in a physical setting where their chilling lifestyle seems almost right.

I guess this might be better than the first one, but I think both films are good in their own way. I think I might like them just the same, even though people might say this is better. The highlight of the film is the Thanksgiving play at the summer camp. If you saw the first film and liked it, or may not have liked it all that much, the sequel will satisfy everyone across the board. Check it out because you will love it, I promise.

Sadly, there was a direct-to-video sequel that was made. Do you want to know how that was? Check in next week when we look at how horrible that was in “Addams Family Month.”