THE ADDAMS FAMILY
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
THE ADDAMS FAMILY is a movie directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, produced by Scott Rudin, from a script by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson. It stars Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci. Rated PB-13, "due to subject matter."
THE ADDAMS FAMILY is derived from Charles Addams's classic "New Yorker" cartoons and from the 1964-1966 U.S. television series (starring Carolyn Jones and John Astin). Rudin and Sonnenfeld, a first-time director, decided to concentrate more on the cartoons than the TV version, to good effect, I think. The opening sequence is a direct lift from a famous Addams Family cartoon, in fact. I enjoyed the resultant silliness. Indeed, one of the strengths of the movie is that it is silly, it knows it's silly, it rejoices in its knowledge. It is serious about silliness.
The performers represent a dream cast, the kind of inevitable choices that result from a lot of selling and looking around. Anjelica Huston is the only woman in the U.S. who could have played Morticia as well as Carolyn Jones did nearly 30 years ago, at least she surely gives us that impression. Morticia is the perfect mother, the all-American mom seen in a negative, just as the Family itself is the all-American family with their every pixel reversed. Of course, Morticia is a patrician mom, but she's still concerned with her children's happiness, as when she temporarily interrupts little Wednesday about to electrocute her cheerfully loathsome brother Pugsley. One of the ways we knows the Addamses are our opposites is their cheerfulness and domestic bliss. Another, of course, is the current of sexuality always a molecule or two beneath the surface. Whether Tish is speaking French or strapped to the Wheel, her eyes are merry and wise, never would she consider raising her voice or disturbing her flawless complexion of dead-white porcelain with negative thoughts.
Whether Raul Julia comes up to manic John Astin's mark as Gomez Addams, Julia gives it a great shot. He is the last of the great romantics, the last of the Latin Lovers. He glitters, he sparkles, he burns brightly. He is vastly more alive than you and I will ever be. He also interjects some new emotions into Gomez' psychology, if that's the word. This Gomez feels guilt, remorse, dejection, suspicion, depression, failure, and is not always in complete control. And he sings and dances. And of course, Julia looks and sounds a lot more like a Gomez than Astin did.
Christopher Lloyd plays Uncle Fester, or does he? That is the crux of the plot, such as it is. The part was pioneered by a defoliated Jackie Coogan. Lloyd apparently had to gain a lot of weight and loose some height to fit into Fester's shapeless robe. The result is a remarkably unattractive Lloyd, a monster turning into a kindly uncle (in the Addams's terms), torn between his villainous mother, played by Elizabeth Wilson, and the somewhat perilous love the Addamses offer. There's a wonderful scene between Morticia and Fester in the Family's graveyard; she tours the ancestors' graves and monument, filling him and us in on the grand tradition to which is an heir apparent. Lloyd gives us an excellent performance, vastly better than anything Coogan could have come up with, if that's the standard.
A word about Christina Ricci, who plays Wednesday: wonderful. Wednesday is full of woe, of course, fascinated with ways to kill Pugsley, as who would not be. Ricci establishes a remarkably sophisticated character, who more than holds own against the adult actors.
There's a lot about the look and feel of THE ADDAMS FAMILY that makes me think of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and BEETLEJUICE and no wonder. Caroline Thompson worked on both scripts and Larry Wilson was Tim Burton's co-producer on BEETLEJUICE. Marc Shalman's score sounds like recycle Danny Elfman, who composes for Burton's movies. The Family graveyard, in particular, bears visual resemblances for both of the above Burton opera.
Over all, I was completely charmed and taken with THE ADDAMS FAMILY. It lived up to my every expectation and then some. The grand ball scene reintroduced me to the sisters Flora and Fauna and to Cousin It, inter alios. Like Addams's original cartoons, violence is never shown on the screen. Wednesday may pull the switch on the Pugsley's electric chair, but we never see or hear the aftermath. Like the sexual tensions between Morticia and Gomez, nothing is ever explicit; that would be too common, too much like the lives you and I live.
I have this theory about the appeal of the Addams Family. By turning the American family inside out, by reversing our pixels, Charles Addams said to us that under our costumes we are all lovable monsters, that all our lives are weird beyond imaging and explaining. That violence and sexuality lives with us as closely as our children or our siblings. And it's ok. It's harmless and funny, and dangerous, and ever present. The Addams Family is who we are, not the abberation, not the exception, but the rule, the archetype. And we love them.
I can recommend THE ADDAMS FAMILY to anyone who is not a terminally humorless dweeb, as are the reviewer for Seattle's two daily newspapers, one of whom actually was clueless enough to complain, "And what are these people, vampires or what?" That would be telling and it would spoil the joke. Pay full ticket price, if you have to, you will get your money's worth.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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