Product: The Addams Family [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 4.0
The Addams Family
Even though this is not a laugh out loud film, it is an excellent example of sarcastic humor. The theme of good vs evil is evident. What isn't so easily discerned is who is good and who is evil. In this film perception truely is everything.Gomez(Raul Julia) and Moricia(Anjelica Huston) Addams are not your typical people next door. They do, however have an extended family to make them somewhat like a typical modern family. Daughter Wednesday(Christina Ricci), son Pugsley(Jimmy Workman), Grandma(Judith Malina) and Lurch, the butler(Carel Struycken) help fill the hideous family mansion with life and after-life.The Addams' have family values they try to pass on to the children, though they are quite different from most value.The trouble starts when so called normal people enter the picture. The family lawyer(Don Hedaya), Abigail Craven(Elizabeth Wilson) and her son(Christopher Lloyd) plot to steal the Addams family fortune. Using deciet and trechary, the son masquerades as Uncle Festor, Gomez's long lost brother. The schemes they hatch and the obsticales they encounter make for interest and entertainment. The family home is well worth a look. It is filled with props and devices that are a perfect compliment to this unsual family. The characters are protrayed with such skill, it makes them perfectly believable. In fact is is hard at times to tell who the main characters are for the entire cast moves in and out of the spot light to first take the lead than support each other as the story unflolds. A twist at the end makes the finish as unique and unsual as the rest of the picture. This is a great change of pace film fitting neatly between the hilarious and the riduclous.