Addams Family Values 1993

[8.0/10] I’m hesitant to ascribe too much of a message to a movie as loony as Addams Family Values. Like the last Addams movie, it is more of a living cartoon than a film devoted to saying much about anything. But if there’s a theme to the film, it’s that the off-beat, out-of-the-ordinary, and downright strange shall inherit the earth, and woe be to the WASPs and normies who’d dare look down on them or stand in their way.

It’s an oddly wholesome message for such a self-consciously macabre film. Black Widow Debbie Jellinsky’s greatest crime isn’t trying to kill Fester. It’s trying to de-Addams him and keep him from his family. The oppressively cheery counselors at Chippewa aren’t so awful for trying to make Wednesday and Pugsley do crafts or walk through the woods. They’re terrible for mistreating all the campers who are non-white, disabled, or otherwise non-conforming and trying to make them and their ringleader, Wednesday, more perky.

Addams Family Values is, like many comedies of the era, a slobs vs. snobs affair. The weird and off-kilter folks go up against the pristine, stuck-up, condescending jerks who’d otherwise ostracize them. But there’s a touch more edge here, a touch more praise for the weirdsmobiles out there, a touch more willingness to call out entitlement and superiority in its most mundane but pernicious forms that elevates this Addams-y sequel above its competitors.

But you know, it’s also a movie where preteens try to kill one another in hilarious fashion, a sultry nanny tries to seduce an overactive manchild, and the day is saved when a combination of bowling balls, roller skates, and broken planks turns a baby into a rube goldberg-inspired deliverer of electrically karmic justice. So maybe it’s not the time or the place to get too highfalutin about this movie.

Suffice it to say, it’s a hoot! The original Addams Family film occasionally had trouble finding the right balance between camp and kitsch, but Values threads that needle perfectly (albeit while administering stitches). The cartoony attempts at murder that make up an exaggerated sibling rivalry tickle-the-ribs. Comical attempts at wooing the opposite sex are silly but sensational. And good lord, the funny dialogue in this one is perfection, particularly when it’s used to cut down an interloper or otherwise shock a normie.

The one-liners are especially divine. Wednesday is a deadpan snark machine, whether she’s specifying that she’s into “homicide” rather than boys, or tossing barbs at Amanda, her Stepford-in-training rival at summer camp. Likewise, Morticia has a wonderfully sly wit, punctuating paens to the traditionally warm and wonderful with gleeful inclusions of the bleak and baleful. It’s an eminently quotable film, chock to the brim with great put-downs and wry asides.

The movie takes a somewhat different approach from its predecessor. While the first Addams flick was basically one unified tale (albeit with plenty of detours), the second divides things into an A-story and B-story. One sees Fester allured and eventually ensnared by serial husband-hurler posing as a nanny, while Morticia and Gomez spur them on only to lament their dear lost brother. The other sees Wednesday and Pugsley shunted off to camp by the nanny for snooping, bristling against the smiling happy fun time environment their counselors are trying to forge.

The latter works better than the former, though both are enjoyable. Summer camps are a great setting for any comedy, rife with excuses for silly conflicts and set pieces, with show-stoppers and gags galore. Seeing the Addams siblings deposited into this lily white cadre of privilege provides a good excuse for them to comment on and resist their captors and would-be brainwashers. And it allows the movie to do a demented spin on the traditional preteen summer romance when Wednesday meets a sympathetic young geek who’s allergic to everything but her muted affections.

The black widow story, by contrast, starts strong but eventually goes off the rails. Joan Cusack kills it as Debbie the conniving nanny and secret killer. She practically licks the scenery when trying to lure in Fester in hopes of securing his riches, and her faux genteel, daggers-behind-the-smile act is delightfully over the top. When she’s worming her way into the Addamses’ good graces, ensconced in the world’s strangest courtship with Fester, and even discovering the depths of the madness she’s getting herself into, her story is a delight.

But once she discovers that her murderous schemes won’t work on the members of this unkillable family, the plot runs out of gas. Suddenly, it turns into an odd “sexual spell” interlude where she keeps Fester from the rest of his family, followed by an overblown third act crescendo of explosions and villain monologues. There’s still bits to like at this point -- from more great bon mots via Morticia and the still near-miraculous effects work of Thing -- but the adventures of Fester and Debbie quickly spin out and never quite get things straight again.

Still, even when it’s not hanging jokes on the plot, Addams Family Values is just a good time. It is, admittedly, an oddly sexual film for somemthing I saw as a kid, with Debbie’s reverse-Lysistrata, an incest joke, and multiple gags about masturbation. But when the movie’s just having fun, from Morticia and Gomez’s flamenco-inspired dance, to the incredible Thanksgiving musical number, to the amusingly black humor and dark sensibility that permeates the film, it’s impossible to resist.

With that sensibility, it celebrates the odd and twisted and otherwise off-kilter things in this world, that don’t fit the molds the Debbie Jalinskys and Counselor Grangers of the world want to cram everything into. With big laughs from stem to stern, it offers a fractured sort of acceptance for all of us strange creatures out there, whether you’re a half-monster or just a smitten geek. And it declares that this family is better together, lest perkier, malign forces try to tear them apart. The title is a joke, but values of the Addams family are as wholesome as their misadventures are hilarious, as even this broad 1990s comedy welcomes one and all into their big spooky tent.