The Addams Family (1991)
 
"Let's play wake the dead!"  "Wake the dead! - can I play - what do I need?"  "Did you bring a shovel?"

This is a remake of the 1960s television series that starred John Astin and Carolyn Jones as Gomez and Morticia Addams - heads of a ghoulish family based on the cartoons by New Yorker magazine cartoonist Charles Addams.  

The movie uses Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston to play the pair and they are cast absolutely brilliantly, while the other main characters are cast fairly close to type.  You'll like Wednesday (Christina Ricci), Lurch (Carel Struyken), Grandmama (Judith Malina),Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and Thing - the disembodied hand - and recognize them if you know the old TV characters.  If the casting were the only question, I would have to give the movie high marks but there were other difficulties that I couldn't get over so easily. 

The main difficulty I found with the movie was the script where they tried to make Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd), one of the most indelibly different characters in the original TV storyline - an imposter; a fake trying to pass as the real Uncle Fester who had disappeared twenty five years before, according to the story; this plot development, of course, to gain access to the fabled Addams' riches - a fortune if only one could lay their hands on it. 

We meet Fester as a strong-arm guy, Gordon; working for a loan shark/con woman (Elizabeth Wilson) that Addams' lawyer (Dan Hedaya) owes a bundle to.  Fester also has mother issues as the loan shark is apparently his mom. Maybe the mother has son issues, too. Anyway, the lawyer promises these thugs access to the Addams fortune if Gordon will play long lost Fester.

These things all play out during the show and probably would have made a good half hour TV episode but as the developments were revealed it seemed a little underwritten for a full length movie.  The individual funny sequences are often pretty good but the overall impression is unfortunately forgettable.  See Gomez and Fester doing the Russian folk dance as one of the high points.  Of course, Gomez blowing up the model train is also a hit.  One thing I don't remember from the TV series was driving golf balls off the balcony high atop the tower and knocking out the neighbor's picture window.  That was a new one on me.

The Paramount DVD is presented in color in 1.85:1 theatrical format with a 99 minute running time.

I have a feeling that this movie would get higher ratings from somebody who didn't live through the television series which has been in reruns endlessly since the 1960s because the characters and their shtick had been so indelibly fixed in the public imagination. Alas, the loss of Uncle Fester's true character until towards the end of the movie left a big hole in the story for those who remember he was Morticia's uncle and not Gomez's brother and the blowing stuff up and electrical stuff he used to do like lighting a lightbulb in his mouth.  Which proves Jackie Coogan (TV's Uncle Fester) is hard to replace. Not to mention the TV script writers.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV