Addams Family Values **** (1993, Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Joan Cusack, Christina Ricci, Jimmy Workman, Carol Kane) – Classic Movie Review 5685

Happily Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1993 comedy Addams Family Values is a slightly sharper sequel to an already successful formula, with Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd oozing style and charisma in welcome reprises of their winning turns as Morticia, Gomez and Uncle Fester Addams.

This time Sonnenfeld directs like an old pro, exulting in the fast pace and dark good-humour, and the picture looks a superior product thanks to added value from another Adam family member – veteran production designer Ken Adam.

Paul Rudnick’s screenplay (based on Charles Addams’s characters) is tighter and wittier than the original, and the smooth, multi-plotted story holds together this time, driving along the gags, linking the comic scenes and supporting the actors’ exuberant turns.

Guest star Joan Cusack scores a bullseye in the show’s biggest part as Debbie Jellinsky, the baby’s new nurse and black widow who has her evil eye on Fester. Christina Ricci and Jimmy Workman are fun as the kids Wednesday and Pugsley and they have all the hilarious black-hued comedy when they are shipped off to the absurd Camp Chippewa, run for true-blue Americans by smug gamesleaders. Director Sonnenfeld appears as Mr Glicker.

Addams Family Values is preceded by The Addams Family (1991) and followed by Addams Family Reunion (1998). Carel Struycken’s Lurch and Christopher Hart’s Thing are the only ones in all three films.

Also in the cast are Carol Kane as Granny, David Krumholtz as Joel Glicker, Dana Ivey as Margaret Addams, Peter MacNicol as Gary Granger, Christine Baranski as Becky Martin-Granger, Mercedes McNab, Sam McMurray, Harriet Sansom Harris, Julie Halston, Nathan Lane, John Franklin, Charles Busch, Laura Esterman, Maureen Sue Levin, Darlene Levin, Carol Hankins, Cynthia Nixon, David Hyde Pierce, Peter Graves, Tony Shalhoub, Kaitlin Hooper and Kristen Hooper (both as baby Pubert Addams).

Paul Rudnick is the writer of Sister Act (1992), Jeffrey (1995), In & Out, Isn’t She Great and The Stepford Wives (2004). He writes a satirical film column for Premiere magazine as Libby Gelman-Waxner.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5685

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