8 THE EVENT , D ECEM BER 8 - J ANUARY 18
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Above: Most of the family, plus Right: baby Pubert
Addams Family Values PREVIEW
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Barry Sonnenfield's successful film adaptation of the 1960's TV show, 'The Addams Family' grossed $150 million on its release in 1991. The sequel, 'Addams Family Values' should prove to be no less successful. lt is ironic that America's most creepy and bizarre gathering should be held up as a model of the nuclear family, but that is Director Barry Sonnenfield's view. He claims that the Addamses are "the ultimate functional family. The parents love the children. The mother and father love each other. They don't change their values based on a whim . They're a perfect family." The sequel sees the introduction of several new characters to the family. Gomez and Morticia are thrilled by the arrival of baby Pubert who sports an extremely attractive moustache. Uncle Fester- never famed for his amorous nature - has fallen for another new arrival, Debbie Jellinsky. The latter is employed as the new nanny with her own ideas about Faster's future, none of which involve his longevity. Wednesday Addams also finds love with Joel Glicker, a boy she meets at Camp Chippewa. The flaw in the 'Addams Family' was that the presentation of the concept glossed over the film's weak plot. 'Addams Family Values' uses the new characters to inject a sense of direction into the film. Debbie Jellinsky
(played by Joan Cusack who recently eo-starred with Dustin Hoffman in 'Hero') is central to this aim. The Addams family see Debbie as slightly mad because she embraces traditional American values such as upward mobility and consumerism . From the moment that Debbie moves 1n With the Addamses, Wednesday is immediately aware of her intentions and soon observes Debbie going through the family's financial affairs Debbie is determined to tear the Addams family apart to get what she wants but does not count on their cohesiveness. Inevitably, the more Debbie tries to destroy the family the more she discovers they are not at all that she expects. Thus, the Addams family's innate weirdness is their main defence against the infiltration of modern values as espoused by Debbie. Essentially this film is a portrayal of the standard struggle between good and evil except that Director Sonnenfeld strives to question the standard conceptions by reversing their popular perception. Thus, the presentation of Debbie as a homely, pastel shaded suburbanite is incongruous with her penchant
for murdering her husbands. In addition Camp Chippewa may be portrayed as the perfect, rustic get-away for the offspring of class conscious yuppies, but as far as inmates Wednesday and Pugsley Addams are concerned, the camp is Hell on earth . When Uncle Fester wntes to Wednesday and Pugsley at Camp Chippewa telling them that he can never see them again, the children know something is wrong back home . Predictably their attempts to escape the camp to rescue Fester are thwarted by the actions of the other campers. The concept of 'Family Values' has been hijacked by the political right in recent times and despite its title this film does not claim to be a satire of this occasional hypocrisy. However the contrast of the morality of family values with the weirdness of the Addams family works well as entertainment and is strengthened in the sequel by a decent storyline which the original lacked.
STATESIDE Georgina King is on holiday路 her exclusive Stateside column from 1he USA returns in 1he next edition of The Event -outJanuary19, 1994.