First of all: UGH! Ptooie! Blech!
Okay, that out of the way…
Before last week I wasn’t even aware that they’d made a third Addams Family movie. I’ve taken to considering that state of affairs my “Garden of Eden” days, before my knowledge of good and evil was clarified and the utter crapola of “Addams Family Reunion” invaded my television screen.
I loved the The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. Yes, they were sort of corny, but so was the TV show, which I also love. More importantly, unlike most of the recent retro sitcoms-made-into-movies, they weren’t a postmodernist, cynical, self-parodying shadow of the original shows. They were faithful adaptations of the type of writing and atmosphere of the original.
And the casting was stupendously perfect: Christina Ricci was so Wednesday it was scary, Angelica Huston was a perfect replacement for Carolyn Jones, Raul Julia nailed Gomez and Christopher Lloyd was a great Fester. When Julia died I thought it was the end for the franchise, and wasn’t particularly upset, since the two movies were about as perfect as they could be.
Then the monstrosity that is Addams Family Reunion aired on Thanksgiving. I spent two hours cringing and wincing (but still watched…go figure). I love Tim Curry. Really. But Gomez Addams is not his role. It was embarrassing to watch. And freakin’ Darryl Hannah as Constipated Morticia?! Kill me now. The girl who played Wednesday tried to recreate Ricci’s deadpan but intense performance and only got cardboard. The boy who played Pugsley was called upon to do far more than he was capable of with an adolescent romance subplot. Fester was, while closer in tone to the TV Fester, just horrible, really.
And the guest stars were just as bad. Ed Begley, Jr., falling into insanity as a psychiatrist having to deal with the Addamses was horrible. The only bright spot was Ray Walston as the bepunked, biker patriarch of the Addams clan that our creepy, kooky crew mistakenly think they’re related to.
Special effects are horrible…CGI that looks like it was done on a Commodore 64, hair and makeup that look more like Looney Tunes than Addams Family, and the attempt to make Darryl Hannah look like a beatiful and dangerous vamp fell as flat as Kate Moss’s chest.
The really jarring thing is that the writing, while uneven, has so many perfect Addams moments which are absolutely ruined by the acting and direction. It made me realize what the movie could have been if the production aspects (casting, direction, effects) had been done right. As it is, good writing is lost in the manure pile that is the rest of the film.