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Addams Family Values
Morticia .......... Anjelica
Huston
Gomez ............. Raul
Julia
Fester ............
Christopher Lloyd
Granny ............
Carol Kane
Wednesday .........
Christina Ricci
Pugsley ........... Jimmy Workman
Debbie Jelinsky ... Joan Cusack
Lurch ............. Carel Struycken
Paramount presents a film directed by
Barry Sonnenfeld. Produced by Scott Rudin. Written by Paul Rudnick.
Based on characters created by Charles Addams.
Photographed by Donald Peterman. Edited by
Arthur Schmidt. Music by Mark
This is a movie about murder and the
occult, played not for horror, but for laughs. As a comedy, this is a
corker. The script and sight gags are enormously funny. It moves fast,
not making the mistake of many comedies which take forever to set
up a gag only to have it fall flat. In this film, the punch lines are
rapid in coming, often in only one word. Girl at summer camp to Wednesday Addams: "Why are you dressed like someone
died?" Wednesday: "Wait." Watch the scenes carefully for
details, like the boiling, smoking witches' brew in the drinks at the
cocktail party.
The performances are great: Raul Julia as the new Fernando Lamas/ Ricardo Montalban/ Cesar Romero,
the stereotypical Latin lover. Anjelica Huston as Morticia, communicating
volumes with her eyebrows. The chemistry between them, especially their
incredible dance number, transcended the genre. I especially enjoyed Christina Ricci,
the young actress who played daughter Wednesday. She played the part
so straight, so somber, that whenever she broke a smile it
was hilarious.
The plot develops in three
directions: (1) the Addams' new baby and the
comic-murderous sibling rivalry of his sister and brother, (2) the older
kids' experience at summer camp which leads to a flaming Armageddon, (3)
uncle Fester (an unrecognizable Christopher Lloyd) marrying a "black
widow," a supposed governess who marries wealthy men and then disposes
of them on her honeymoon. (Her disgruntlement over her failure
to murder Fester is wonderful to behold.)
Christians may well wonder whether
it is legitimate for them to laugh at this sort of thing. After all, we
take very seriously such things as mass murder and witchcraft.
Some, too, have quoted Proverbs 14:9
in the translation "Fools make a mock at sin" to indicate that
Christians should never laugh at anything evil. However, the NIV
translation, "Fools mock at making amends for sin, but good will is
found among the upright" is a legitimate possibility and seems to
fit the context better. And can we forget entirely the jokes
that Jesus tells about rich fools, those who strain at gnats, and
the like?
Now at one level, laughter about
such things is not hard to justify. God laughs at the wicked (Psm. 2:7), and one "perspective" on
Scripture is that God's redemptive plan is a great joke upon the wicked.
God's wisdom, foolish to the world, makes the world look foolish (I Cor. 1, 2). But in this particular movie, the wicked
win out. Indeed, the Addams monsters, murderers
and ghouls attract most all of the audience's sympathy. (The
"straight" people in the film are hideously unattractive.)
Should we be embarrassed about laughing, to say nothing of cheering them
on?
The laughter here is based on the
old premise, common to many New
Yorker cartoonists, not only the late Charles Addams,
that famous and infamous people must have some kind of ordinary home life:
Napoleon taking out the garbage, etc. I remember one New Yorker cartoon in which a king in full regalia walks into
a living room, throws his beautifully jeweled crown on a hat rack and says
"honey, I'm home." The ironic juxtaposition between his
political dignity and his "typical" home life evokes laughter.
The Addamses are like that: monsters, to be
sure, but with "family values" that are in some ways
"just like you and me."
But Christians know better than most
people that wickedness destroys "typical family life." Most mass
murderers are "loners," as we are told over and over again in
the press. Witches and ghouls are not usually "family" people.
Going against God's order in one area of life tends to produce
dislocations in other areas, and the family is usually the first to
undergo distortion. The family is a delicate institution.
Its preservation requires close attention to God's laws.
So the idea of murderers and witches
having a typical American family life is all the more absurd to those who
know Christ. We know it just can't be so. Thus we can be amused at
the fantasy. It is like a pig dancing the tango. It is funny,
because it just doesn't happen. When the older Addams
kids try several times to kill their baby brother, we know perfectly well
that no real family could survive the crisis. (It enhances my
amusement to note that had the events of the film taken place
in California, Child Protective Services would have torn the Addams Family apart ten minutes into the first reel.)
That the family remains together and resolves the whole thing with some
bizarre rationality and good feeling satirizes neatly not only
the wicked, but also the psychiatric establishment, which
mandates "acceptance" as therapy. When the Addams
kids burn down their summer camp, evidently destroying the majority of
kids and counselors in the process, we know that in the real world
they would be sent to a juvenile
Humor is often based on discrepancy,
and good humor reveals important discrepancies in the world. The
largest discrepancy is between God's created order (the family) and
human sin (the Addams' lifestyle). Humor which
underscores that discrepancy says much that needs to be said in our time. "Addams Family Values," though not
informed by Scripture, recognizes the absurdity of family coexisting with
monstrosity; therefore, in one sense, it is an edifying movie. I believe
that God is pleased to see us laughing at it.
But not to see us cheering them on.
Unfortunately, the great comedy in this movie is a kind of lure. It offers
us scripturally proper laughter to guide us into
scripturally improper attitudes. While a
Christian would (or should) find the situation entirely ridiculous, the
filmmakers actually seem to be taking it seriously, at a certain level. To
them, the "ordinary home life" of the murderers, ghouls, and
vampires is not just an ironic bit of nonsense. Rather, the Addamses seem to be a kind of symbol of all those
groups in society which are misunderstood and oppressed. This is
especially evident in the summer camp adventure. The camp establishment is
a political liberal's nightmare: rich WASP bigots who demand of everyone
else happy, Disneyesque, smiling faces.
Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, however,
befriend Jews, blacks, and handicapped, and they come on with an
"attitude." Of course, according to the film, they are the only
ones in camp with any brains at all. When the camp director puts on a
maudlin Thanksgiving pageant, the Addams
and their friends, forced to participate in Indian costume, turn
it into a demonstration for Native American rights, and hence
a massacre. The film seems to be
saying that all the WASP campers deserve to die because they are not
politically correct.
There is also at least a hint of
support to animal rights. At the pageant, Pugsley
comes on dressed as a turkey, singing "eat me," "eat
me." Unlike Wednesday's Indians, Pugsley is
following the script of the WASP camp director, who hates all minorities
and who, by writing this song, we gather, also oppresses the turkey
population.
So, by analogy, the Addams are just another victim group. They are just
like you and me, except that society has misunderstood them. Sure, the
kids try several times to murder their baby brother; but underneath it
all, their hearts are pure, because they defend Native American claims to
the continent. Indeed: who do the "straights"
think they are, telling other people what a "family" should be?
Doesn't any group which lives together in love, after a fashion,
constitute a family? (Where have we heard that before?) Don't the Addamses, after all, have "family values" in
the best sense?
I suppose the filmmakers could chide us at this point for taking it all too seriously. Perhaps they could even make a case that the movie is a satire on political correctness. Maybe so, to some extent. Indeed, I prefer to take it that way, for as such it makes better comedy. But there is no doubt that this film is on the side of the witches. In the best comedies, the major comic characters are never scum, never mere fools, though some of the supporting characters may be. In some way, the lead figures evoke the sympathy of the audience. Think of Chaplin, or Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, or Mickey Mouse. (There are exceptions, like Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin in the "Naked Gun" series. But while that series is quite funny, most of us would not list it among the "great" comedies.) The filmmakers want us not only to laugh at the Addamses, indeed not only to love them, but also to admire them in some respects. But these are not, on the whole, candidates for Christian admiration. I admit that they do stand by their convictions and support their constituency, which they consider to be oppressed; but, after all, so did Hitler. So be careful. Do laugh, but don't leave your critical faculties at the door.