Addams Family Values

Not quite as good as the first one. The best thing about it, as with the first, is Christina Ricci as Wednesday. She is just perfectly deadpan, and all her responses are just right. Raúl Juliá and Anjelica Huston are both good. There is a nice effect so that every time we see Morticia’s face her eyes are weirdly illuminated. I thought Christopher Lloyd was quite a bit over the top as Fester, and we get entirely too much of him as the main plot thread is his marriage to a black widow played by Joan Cusack.

Missed opportunities: We needed more of Lurch, and it was criminal never to have let him deliver his signature line: “You rang?” I also think Thing is a lot funnier as a weird hand that is in every little box on every little table in the mansion, than as a disembodied hand. I’m sure it was a matter of showing off special effects, and it was probably pretty impressive in 1991 and 1993, but not anymore.