Addams Family Values Review

 

Ladies and gents it's been well over a year since I review the 1991 film adaptation of The Addams Family which was also called The Addams Family. As such I feel that it's about time that I take a look at it's 1993 which is honestly something that i've both been planning and putting of doing for some time now however since it's halloween I feel that it's about right that I take a look at a film featuring the creepy family and so here is my review of "Addams Family Values" enjoy the review everyone and on with the review.

The plot of the movie is serial killer infiltrates The Addams Family and plans to steal a fortune by marrying Uncle Fester meanwhile Wednesday and Pugsley are sent to the worst place imaginable summer camp. I honestly feel that the plot of the first film is alot better then the plot of this film just because in this film the story doesn't work nor make sense since any member of The Addams Family would love to get married to a serial killer and the story is very weak at best in my own very humble opinion that is.

Starring in the film is Anjelica Huston as Morticia Addams , Raul Julia as Gomez Addams and Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester. Also starring in the film is Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams , Christopher Hart as Thing , Carel Struycken as Lurch , Jimmy Workman as Pugsley Addams , Carol Kane as Grandmama Addams , Joan Cusack as Debbie Jellinsky , Mercedes McNab as Amanda Buckman , David Krumholtz as Joel Glicker , Peter MacNicol as Gary Granger and Christine Baranski as Becky Martin-Granger.

The acting in this film was honestly really good with all of the returning actors ( I couldn't be bothered listing who was returning and who wasn't just incase your wondering why I didn't mention the returning actors when listing who is in this film) turning in solid performances. Hell even the new cast members do a really good job but what lets the new actors down is thew fact that the script gives them nothing to work with which isn't an issue for the returning actors because both we the audience and the actors in question know what there characters are like and what there personalities are but the same cannot be said for the new characters since the script gives those character no personality whatsoever which means the actors do that good of a job and at best can only deliver an ok performance.

There's something really bugged me about this film and it's the fact that the plot line involving Uncle Fester (Played By Back To The Future Star Christopher Lloyd) is almost the exact same plot featuring the exact same character from the first film. Hell the film even copies scenes from the first film which to me makes no sense whatsoever since with a franchise like The Addams Family you can literally do anything you wanted and it would somehow make sense and yet you repeat a plot line and several scenes from much better first movie where's the logic in doing that.

Now there was going to be a third film in this Paramount Pictures live action Addams Family film franchise however due t0o the death of Gomez Addams actor Raul Julia the film was cancelled. I honestly think that it's a shame that we didn't get more films in the Paramount Pictures produced Addams Family live action film series just because these actors and these versions of the characters are so engraved in my head that whenever I picture these characters i'm seeing the actors from either this film or the first film and the same even goes for The Addams Family mansion since it's such a cool looking mansion.

Now this is something that I wondered last year and i'm still confused as to how they brought The Thing to life in either of these two movies. Since it could be CGI but given that these films were made in the very early nineties I doubt that's how they brought the thing to life and so the only thing that I could think if is that they rotoscoped the actor who played The Thing out of each shot except of course for his hand but that would have been very time consuming even back then and so I really have no idea how they brought The Thing to life in either of these two Paramount Pictures released Addams Family films.

Now then since this is an Addams family adaptation that does mean there are some spooky things in this film. With perhaps the spookiest thing and also oddly the funniest thing in the movie is the fact that the film makers have a scene were Wednesday smiles and you just know that when she does that she's thinking how she's going to get revenger on each and every person who bullied her at that camp since yeah both she , Pugsley and all the other outcast kids kind of get bullied at this summer camp.

This film is an hour and thirty four minuets long which in my opinion is a little bit on the long side for a film that has a very weak plot. If anything this film should have been well under an hour and a half including both the opening and ending credits. As a result of this running time and weak plot the film does feel alot longer then it's one hour and thirty four minuet running time which is a shame because there is a decent film to be found here the just needed a better plot to let that good film out but there's not a good plot in this film so there you go.

Now then boys and girls since this is a comedy that does mean that we have to talk about the jokes that are in this film. Which I honestly feel are this film's biggest selling point because my god is this film funny almost every single joke told in this film landed for me and had me laughing I honestly cannot thing of a single bad joke in this film and it helps that alot of the film's funniest lines were given to the character of Wednesday Addams (Christina Ricci who was born to play the role of Wednesday Addams in these Paramount Pictures live action film adaptations of The Addams Family) who's dark and sadistic humour just works really well.

Overall while I cannot say that this film is better then the 1991 film version of The Addams Family I think that we can all agree it's much better then Addams Family Reunion. Yes this film does have it's problems all of which i've covered in this review those issues to me were apart of the film's charm as such this film gets a 6 out of 10 from me. As for where I got the images that I used in this review I got Them from either the official The Addams Family fandom wiki page or Google Images and I honestly have no clue which one is better to use since there both the same in terms of image quality.

 

 

The Addams Family "The Addams Family Goes to School" Review

Horror fans depending on where your seeing this review you'll know that in my previous review I gave you a little clue as to what my next review was going to be and when I say little I mean I straight up posted the title card from the show. Again depending on where your seeing this review you'll know that i've reviewed a few other things from this franchise but the one thing i've never done is reviewed an episode from the the original 1964 show and so here is my review of the first episode of The Addams Family "The Addams Family Goes to School" enjoy.

The plot of the episode is the local school board realises that both Pugsley and Wednesday have never gone to school and so send truant officer to try and get Morticia and Gomez to agree to let there children go to school and of course mishaps ensue. I honestly loved the story since it felt like something that would happen to The Addams Family and the fact highlighted how much Morticia and Gomez care for there kids was for me a good thing as well as the fact that it was honestly enjoyable to see play out , as such I didn't really want the episode to end.

Starring in the episode is of course the series main cast here consisting of John Astin as Gomez Addams, Carolyn Jones as Morticia Addams , Ken Weatherwax as Pugsley Addams , Lisa Loring as Wednesday Addams , Blossom Rock as Grandmama , Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester and Ted Cassidy as Lurch. With the guest cast for this episode being Allyn Joslyn as Sam Hilliard , Madge Blake as Miss Comstock and Nydia Westman as Miss Morrison.

In terms of what I thought about the acting in the episode given that i've only seen a very small handful of episodes from this show it was honestly pretty decent. I can't exactly say it was good because there are some performances that are fairly bad but at the same time there are some performances that are good but given that this was the first episode of the show you can't expect the acting to be perfect right away.

What many of you might not know is that in the original Charles Addams comic strips the main characters didn't have any names. Which for a comic strip is fine but that doesn't work for a live action TV show as such Charles Addams himself came up with the names for the characters as such whenever you see an Addams Family movie and they have there names you have this show to thank for them getting there names.

Another thing that this episode and this show introduced to us was the famous Addams Family theme song. Which has become so well known that it's honestly hard to picture any Addams Family adaptation without this theme song being played at some point and hell I bet the family the songs writer Vic Mizzy, are glad that he wrote the song because he'd hopefully still be getting checks for the song whenever it gets played.

As with The Munsters The Addams Family are a very close knit family and while the joke might be look at these strange people who think we are the strange ones. That doesn't take away from the fact that the family deeply care for each other and this episode is solid proof of that since Morticia and Gomez act like good parents when they comfort Wednesday and Pugsley after there first day of school which is something that we don't see happen in comedies anymore and I don't know why since it makes the parent characters look bad.

What also makes this family such a tight knit family is the fact that to them we are the strange ones and they are the "normal" ones. Since they are so unashamed of who they are and what they like which to others might seem strange and odd but to them it's normal and so we should strive to be more like The Addams Family and not be ashamed of who we are and what we like instead of liking things just because other people like them.

There are a few things that I didn't like the first of which being the Addams Family mansion which to me on the outside at least didn't look like something you'd expect The Addams Family to own or live in since it looked like a nice house on the outside. Things do get a little better on the inside but not much since it lacks that extra something to really make it look like something that this family would own as such this house just lacks character or charm.

The other thing that I didn't like is also kind of a positive and that's the fact that this episode wasn't long enough. The episode was only twenty five minuets long and I honestly wanted it to be longer because I was having such a good time with the episode and spending time with this version of the characters that I didn't want the episode to end but at the same time im glad that it did end because it left me wanting to see more of these characters.

Now then boys and girls since this is a comedy that means that we have to talk about the jokes that are in the episode. Which I honestly feel were really freaking good and i;m not going to lie I laughed out loud quite a few times during this episode which for me at least is very rare thing to do even when i'm on my own and so if there are jokes in this episode that got me to laugh out loud then you know that they must be good with my all time favourite joke in this episode being when Lurch is playing the organ and Morticia hits him on the head ad he suddenly starts playing something more upbeat and she starts dancing to it which is a simply joke but it's funny.

Overall this was a really funny episode hell this episode was so funny that they actually remade this episode in the nineties as the second episode of The New Addams Family but then again they also remade Halloween With The New Addams Family as well as the premier episode of The New Addams Family. This episode isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it does have solid pacing and solid jokes and solid acting all of which you want in a comedy as such this episode gets an 8.5 out of from me.

All images used in this review were gathered from either Google Images of The Addams Family official fandom wiki page. I'm not going to lie I had a blast covering this episode so much so that it's actually making me consider looking at other episodes from this series or other episodes from this franchise and yeah alot of the images were shockingly in HD so feel free to use either website if you want some HD Addams Family images and as always we end this review with our one true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very unpleasant dreams.