Review of The Addams Family (1991) by Troy C — 31 Jul 2012

They're creepy and they're kooky; mysterious and spooky. They're the Addams family, and depending on your age, they're either a pleasant spin-off or a hysterical departure from reality.

As a project that was destined to invite comparison, "The Addams Family" has, rather, chosen to demand it by borrowing extensively from the original television series. And therein lies the key to approaching this film.

Viewers familiar with the mid-sixties t.v. show may find the big screen version to be too much a recycling of the old material. Faithful in its reproduction of the quirky family established in the original, it fails to take us much further. Ironically, it is "Thing" -freed from the confines of his box through the wonders of modern optical effects- that displays the greatest development in character.

Perhaps the writers felt that these personalities were too strongly remembered to be toyed with. Perhaps they were just lazy.

To the benefit of the show, they have extended the film to include homage to the original Charles Addams' cartoons through some distinctive images which will be familiar to the older fans.

To the remainder of the film-going population, which probably doesn't remember the t.v. show, (let alone the "New Yorker" cartoons) "The Addams Family" will be a wild romp through the macabre and black-humored world of Charles Addams.

The film is firmly anchored by the talents of Raul Julia and Angelica Houston as Gomez and Morticia Addams; wonderfully comic in their sincerity., A barely recognizable Christopher Lloyd is fun as a simple-minded con artist trying to impersonate the long missing uncle Fester.

Lacking the dense visual texture of Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice", the Addams' world is nevertheless wild and creative; with snarling bearskin rugs and a disembodied hand running throughout the house.

The imaginative use of camera angles and movement is appropriately disorienting and bizarre; adding an amusement park atmosphere to the whole experience.

Rated PG-13, "The Addams Family" is probably not suitable for young children, given its off-beat black humor and the on-going executionary antics of the Addams' children.