Review of The Addams Family (1991) by Stuart K — 06 Feb 2015

Based upon the comic strip created by Charles Addams, which became a classic TV series in the 1960's, it marked the film debut of Barry Sonnenfeld, who was then the cinematographer of films by The Coen Brothers.

It was a good start to his career, and it was a dark and gothic comedy, and it had a very wicked sense of humour with some brilliant gags on display throughout. Gomez Addams (Raúl Juliá) had a falling out with his brother Fester (Christopher Lloyd) 25 years previously, and Fester went missing.

His lawyer Tully Alford (Dan Hedaya), owes money to loanshark Abigail Craven (Elizabeth Wilson), whose son Gordon (Lloyd again) resembles Fester. So, Alford and Craven come up with a plan to pass Gordon off as Fester.

For a while it works, with Craven pretending to be a psychiatrist to make Gomez feel guilty, but Gomez thinks Fester is an imposter, and so does his wife Morticia (Anjelica Huston). Then the children Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) find out about the con.

Like most TV to film adaptations, it could have been a mess, but this stays true and faithful to Addams' original comic strip, and it has some brilliant comic moments and some spirited performances, in particular Juliá having the time of his life as Gomez, it's success enabled a sequel which followed 2 years later.