Image by Paramount via Horrornews.net
Hello friends! So there I was, sitting in my room one boring Saturday morning. I wanted to watch a movie. Something lighthearted and easy to digest. I scroll through Amazon Prime and come across The Addams Family from 1991. "Hey," I say to myself. "I remember this movie. I liked it." So I watch it. An hour and a half goes by. The end credits roll. "Huh," I said. "I don't remember that at all. I must have seen a different one. But I loved it!" That got me thinking about other movies I never saw or think I remember seeing from my childhood. Which got me thinking about my childhood. Which got me thinking about how cool it would be to talk about movies and my childhood. Which got me wanting to talk about movies. "Hey, maybe I should start a blog..."
The Addams Family was released on November 22, 1991. I had just turned nine the previous month and my brother was still a year away. I remember the movie being announced, but I didn't go see it. I thought I saw it on TV a few years later, but that was likely one of the other movies. I don't have much to say about November 91. I had just been to Florida for the first (to date, only) time the previous month. Several nights while we were in Panama City, we had dinner at this restraunt that was inside of a pirate ship. Fillet of Sole. So so so good. There was a miniature golf course there where my dad had "famously" sat and been photographed inside the hand of a giant monkey statue when he was a kid. I say famous because it was famous in my family, not actually famous. They took a photo of me in that monkey. I believe both photos are gone for good, having lost a storage unit a few years ago. And it makes me sad to think that pirate ship and monkey statue are likely gone as well, likely from severe storms or those places going out of business.
But back to the movie. The late 80s and early 90s were a weird time. There were tons of gross and horrific toys and shows marketed towards kids. Specifically boys. Most likely, some kids from the 60s grew up and got into marketing. They remembered they liked gross stuff as younger boys and so there was a lot of gross and macabre toys and content produced for children. Creepy Crawlers. Gak. Lasertime. Madballs. Food Fighters. Cartoons and shows based on, of all things, Beetlejuice, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, The Toxic Avenger, and Tales From the Crypt. And who can forget Count Duckula and Goosebumps. I mean. Seriously. Madballs were legit! With this in mind, it should be no surprise that The Addams Family got made. I don't remember seeing much of the show, the Munsters yes, but not much Addams Family, though I know it was on the air.
As Wednesday Addams, Christina Ricci is all that and a bag of chips!
Image by Paramount via Good Housekeeping
The plot is... absurd. And not in a good way. It follows the trend of most of these kinds of movies. "Hey this was a popular show 20-30 years ago, let's make a movie to cash in on the nostalgia. Story? Pfft. Make sure it's absolutely nothing like the show." The plot of the movie is that Uncle Fester has been lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Some loan shark wants to steal the Addams' fortune. Her son looks just like Fester so she convinces him to impersonate the bald Uncle. Awkward hilarity ensues. I'm sure you can see how this will go.
This movie shouldn't work. Yet it does. And a huge credit goes to the cast. Raul Julia (Gomez), Anjelica Huston (Morticia), Christopher Lloyd (Fake Fester), and Christina Ricci (Wednesday) are all exceptional. They make the lame story work fabulously through total commitment to their roles. Julia looks like he's having the time of his life. Ricci is wonderful, delivering each and every line of Gothic macabre with a total deadpan delivery. My favorite scene in the movie is when Wednesday straps Pugsley to an electric chair to play a game. "What game?" He cheerfully asks. The camera slowly zooms in on Ricci's totally emotionless face, and she utters "Is there a god?" Amazing. Lurch is played by the wonderful Carel Struycken, who at this same time had recurring roles as The Giant on Twin Peaks and Mr Homm on Star Trek: TNG. Also worth noting is a small role by Mercedes McNab as a girl scout. Mercedes would go on to play a regular role as Harmony on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin off Angel. I like to think that the unnamed girl scout she plays is actually Harmony, which puts this version of the Addams Family square inside the Buffyverse. Which ends up making too much sense.
I will openly admit to an attraction to Morticia and I'm not ashamed
Image by Rex via telegraph.co.uk
The other thing that makes The Addams Family work is the writing. The plot is lame but Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson wrote dialogue that is sharp and crisp. Again, the delivery is what makes it work so well. But the dialogue is dark and funny and well done. It makes it easy for the actors to just slide in and make the roles their own.
Just to remind you that this is an early 90s movie, the main song played over the credits is The Addams Family Groove by MC Hammer. I remember when Hammer dropped the "MC" from his name and started just going by Hammer. It was sometime around this time period. The Addams Family Groove music video is pretty funny. Scenes from the film mixed with Hammer's total ridiculous, cheesy performance. It hasn't aged well but is amusing to watch.
There was a TV special called "The Making of 'The Addams Family'" that was shown around this time. I tried to find it to watch it for this, but couldn't locate it.
The Addams Family was originally supposed to be a Tim Burton project, which makes a lot of sense. Burton was hot at this time, with Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands under his belt. Burton passed and Barry Sonnenfeld took the reigns for his directorial debut. He went on to do Get Shorty and the Men in Black trilogy and the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events. But he also did Wild Wild West and Nine Lives, proving everyone can make mistakes.
There were lots of production delays and issues. People getting sick or hurt. Julia had his eye burst. Huston spent hours everyday in makeup, so they could get the eye slant right. It seemed to be a nightmare and the movie went over budget from $25 million to $30 million. The original production company, Orion, sold the movie to Paramount. The movie was released around the same time as the Speilberg/Robin Williams hit Hook, which I did see in theaters because I was fully into pirates at the time. Still, The Addams Family managed to gross almost $200 million, making it a big hit and reinvigorating a franchise.
Film Series has a great audio video detailing the behind-the-scenes issues. Screen Rant has a cool secrets video as well. Here are couple of interesting behind-the-scenes videos:
The movie was followed by a sequel, 1993's Addams Family Values, which I will get to at some point, and which might have been the movie I remember seeing. I dunno yet. Addams Family also kick started a revival of the Addams' in the 90s. There was a direct-to-video movie in 1998 called Addams Family Reunion, which stares Tim Curry and Daryl Hannah and was intended to be the pilot for a new series. I'll also be reviewing that eventually. There were also a couple of animated TV series in the 90s, The Addams Family and The New Addams Family. And of course, in the 10s, they produced an Addams Family stage musical and a whole new animated movie in 2019.
The Addams Family also inspired a couple of video games. Fester's Quest had already come out on the NES before this, but The Addams Family inspired a game of the same name, on basically every system at the time, in 1992. AVGN has a great video on the Addams Family games. Watch it here.
Christina Ricci grew up to do something even more evil than Wednesday Addams ever did: Smoking in public
Image Source
Final Verdict:
The acting and dialogue alone make this movie work watching, especially if you like dark, macabre style humor. I had a smile on my face for almost the whole movie. And as the credits started to roll and MC Hammer hit, I was in cheese heaven! Also the effects, which I didn't talk much about, were very well done for the time. I can't give it a full five stars though, just because the base plot is really dumb and the twist at the end is equally as stupid. This would have been very average if not for the jokes and performers. They saved the day and I very much recommend a watch.
No, actually. Quite the opposite!
I highly encourage you to watch this on your own and form your own opinion. Or have you already seen it? Let me know what you thought in the comments. I watched it on Amazon Prime when I saw it. You can go to Just Watch to see where it's streaming currently and where you can snag a digital copy.
Next up is another horror comedy from 1991, Nothing But Trouble. Is this Dan Aykroyd directed film nothing but laughs? Or is it nothing but garbage? Find out on Friday!
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