"You have gone too far. You have married Fester, you have destroyed his spirit, you have taken him from us. All that I could forgive. But, Debbie...pastels?"
Dan-da-dan. Dan-da-dan. Dan-da-dan-dan-da-dan-da-dan—
Thirty-five years on, we had what was perhaps the incepting entry in that one nineties Hollywood trend of adapting as many TV shows from the sixties as possible (and yes this one started as a comic, but most people back then would likely think of the show!). Either way, what we essentially had was Barry Sonnenfeld doing his best to one-up Tim Burton—so how do both of his takes on the Addams Family hold up?
Well, with both of them, what made them both a success boiled down to one thing—the excellent casting. When it comes to the most famous family of old-school goths in fiction, you need both an equal measure of sincerity and goofiness—and foremost we have the legendary Raul Julia bringing his Shakespearean gusto as Gomez, so much so that many people forgot that the original version was way less photogenic. Even when he’s just playing around with train sets, he can’t help but utterly own the frame—nor focus that Latino charm when he’s alongside Anjelica Huston as Morticia, who’s just that right level of being deadpan yet forthright.
And before Netflix did it, there was of course Christina Ricci inspiring a whole generation of morbid sarcasm as young Wednesday. So with our kooky spooky family, the players were exactly right—on top of that we had Christopher Lloyd as a seemingly amnesiac Uncle Fester being used to infiltrate the family on behalf of corrupt scam artists. And there’s where the first one stumbled a bit for me—the main plot and antagonists are just a bit weak, being used essentially to punctuate what are still some decent gags and moments. Like even their living hairball Cousin Its getting a girlfriend.
Now, at least in my opinion, that was all fixed in the sequel, which did it much more for me, especially with Joan Cusack as spoilt rich girl serial killer Debbie, giving us a real contrast to our eccentric but honest leads. Despite all the appearance of the all-American young woman, she becomes the embodiment spoilt superficial consumerism—even if the rest may have accepted her if only she was actually open and self-realizing about it!
Ricci also gets even more excellent moments, destroying a Thanksgiving play in a sequence that probably would’ve had certain corners of social media going into meltdown if they did it today. Overall, even if it wasn’t a successful commercially, that’s what leads Addams Family Values as my preferred one—with more biting satire, gags, and theming over all. I would say that with both, Sonnenfeld did indeed out-Burton Burton!
So that leaves both films holding up for the most part—especially in comparison to some of the other television adaptations of the nineties. Of course, other more recent takes on the macabre counter to American suburbia have made their own mark, but for some, this remains the standard…
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