Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The Addams Family Blu-ray Movie Review

Neat, Sweet, Petite. The Blu-ray Isn't Bad Either

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 8, 2014

Could New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams ever have anticipated in 1938 when he first began to draw what became known as "The Addams Family" just how long and popular a life his creation would have? When Addams died in 1988, he had seen only the television show, which ran on ABC for two seasons (from 1964-1966) but whose memorable theme song by Vic Mizzy is instantly recognizable with just four notes and two finger snaps. It was the continued popularity of the theme song that convinced producer Scott Rudin to pursue the movie rights (held by Addams' second wife, who is thanked at the beginning of the credits under her remarried name, The Lady Colyton). Despite critical griping, the 1991 release was so successful that it spawned a sequel, Addams Family Values, two years later. Most recently, in 2010 a Broadway musical starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth played to full houses nightly despite scathing reviews that would normally bury a show as deeply as the ancestors in the Addams Family graveyard. International companies are currently touring.

The writers of the film adaptation, Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) and Larry Wilson (Beetlejuice), and director Barry Sonnenfeld, helming his first feature after a successful career as a cinematographer, faced a delicate task. They had to retain what fans of the Sixties TV show remembered fondly, but still create something new and cinematic for an audience that had experienced the films of Tim Burton and grown comfortable with treating horror icons as friends and heroes. The creative team's solution was to return to the source, drawing inspiration from Addams' cartoons, whose ghoulish humor remains as wickedly original as ever. The best Addams cartoons tell an entire story visually, with few words or none at all. Sonnenfeld opens and closes The Addams Family with scenes drawn directly from two of Addams' drawings, and he wisely doesn't try to improve on the master. The camera moves just the way the eye does as it surveys Addams' lines and shadows, and the punchline lands just as the great cartoonist intended.

So much of what's enjoyable in The Addams Family consists of details lifted directly from either the New Yorker cartoons or the television show, e.g., Morticia Addams (Angelica Huston) "arranging" roses by snipping the flowers off the stems or Gomez Addams' (Raul Julia) passionate pet name for his spouse, "Cara mia!" But jokes and details, however well played (and the entire cast is pitch perfect), do not make a movie, even with a house as gothically elaborate as the one created by production designer Richard MacDonald, a kind of Pee-wee's Playhouse designed by the Marquis de Sade. So the screenwriters have invented a plot that is admittedly outlandish, but no more so than most episodes from the TV series. It involves Gomez's long-lost brother, Fester, who, in the series, was Morticia's uncle, but here is uncle to their two children, Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and the intimidating Wednesday (Christina Ricci, who was ten years old when she made the film). Twenty-five years ago, Fester and Gomez had a terrible feud, and Fester stormed off into the great wide world. Every since, the family has conducted an annual seance in an effort to find him.

Gomez's desire to find his missing brother makes him the target of a swindle conceived by his own attorney, Tully Alford (Dan Hedaya, at his sniveling best). Tully observes an extraordinary resemblance between the portraits of Fester in the Addams house and the loan shark, Gordon Craven (Christopher Lloyd), who is about to break Tully in half. Why not impersonate Fester, Tully suggests to Gordon's senior partner, his mother Abigail (Elizabeth Wilson)? Gomez and the family will embrace their returning relative, and Gordon will gain access to the family's secret vault and fabulous wealth. (How did the Addams Family get rich? Don't ask; the film doesn't tell.)

A typical episode of The Addams Family required introducing an outsider to the "creepy and kooky" household to react with wonder and terror to the family's oddities, and the film script fills that role with Tully and Abigail Craven, who disguises herself, with a ripe German accent, as "Dr. Pinder-Schloss" the psychiatrist who helped "Uncle Fester" regain his memory after an accident in the Bermuda Triangle. But after some initial adjustment problems, Gordon Craven is shocked to find himself fitting right in. After all, he does arrive with a suitcase stocked with items like a chainsaw, a crowbar and dynamite, not to mention a bottle of cyanide ("As if we'd run out", says Morticia reproachfully). Wednesday's gimlet eye suspects an impostor, but even she is eventually won over, when her new uncle helps the Addams children devise an inventive presentation for their school performance. The lines are from Shakespeare. The sword fight is strictly Friday the 13th.

Tully's plot eventually expands to include the Addams's long-suffering neighbor, Judge Womack (Paul Benedict), who will do just about anything to rid himself of Gomez and his clan. Of course, what none of them expects is how much Gordon Craven has come to prefer his new family to the abusive manipulation of his "loving" mother. There comes a point when Abigail Craven can no longer control her hulking son. Or is he her son? The original script for The Addams Family left this point unclear, but according to Barry Sonnenfeld, the entire cast staged a revolt insisting that the issue be resolved.

Of all the characters in The Addams Family, perhaps the busiest is the much-beloved "Thing", the detached hand that, on television, was limited to popping out of locations where an actor could be concealed. Thanks to more advanced effects technology, Thing is now free to roam far and wide, performing feats of which his TV predecessor could never have dreamed. (The hand belongs to Christopher Hart, whose talented paw also appears in Idle Hands.) Racing across town to deliver important news to Gomez, Thing navigates a busy intersection like an acrobat. By the time, he reaches his destination, he is so exhausted, he can barely spell out his message, prompting Gomez to exclaim, "It's terrible when you stutter!"

The Addams Family Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Although the credited cinematographer on The Addams Family is Owen Roizman (The French Connection and Wyatt Earp, among others), the film is the work of three different DPs. Gale Tattersall (House, M.D.) briefly replaced Roizman when the latter left to shoot Grand Canyon but was quickly sidelined by illness, at which point Sonnenfeld resumed his old post for the duration of the film. Despite these personnel changes, The Addams Family has a remarkably consistent visual style, which borrows liberally from the imagery of Tim Burton's two Batman films in its gothic use of shadow and darkness.

Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, based on a Paramount transfer, provides an appropriately dark image with excellent blacks and different shades of black, so that the moody and often decrepit interiors of the Addams mansion are rendered in all their oddity. Morticia's long hair and dark eyes, Gomez's moustache, the impassive features of the imposing butler, Lurch (Carel Struycken), and the revolting textures of the unidentifiable foods dished up by Granny, a/k/a "Ma-mah" (Judith Malina), are all well reproduced. So are the long flowing locks that distinguish Cousin It (John Franklin), who makes a bold play for Tully Alford's unhappy wife, Margaret (Dana Ivey).

The palette allows for bright intrusions, like Morticia's red lips and nails, and a party sequence midway through the film that displays a wide array of hues. But these splashes of color only serve to reinforce the expressive grays, blues and blacks of the typical Addams Family setting, like the family graveyard.

A touch of grain reduction appears to have been applied to the image, so that the film's grain pattern is virtually undetectable in darker scenes, either indoors or at night, although it is still visible in brighter scenes outdoors. This is no doubt what has allowed Warner to get away with restricting the 104-minute film to a BD-25, at an average bitrate of 21.92 Mbps. Careful allocation of the available bits seems to have prevented any obvious compression errors, but a film like The Addams Family, which has many active scenes, should be given greater room to breathe.

The Addams Family Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Addams Family was released to theaters in Dolby surround, then remixed for 5.1 when Paramount released it on DVD in 1999. The DVD offered a choice between both mixes, but the 5.1 is the only track provided on Blu-ray, in lossless DTS-HD MA. The omission of the original stereo surround track isn't a major loss, however, because the 5.1 track is little more than a discrete encoding of the four channels created for the surround matrix, with minor reinforcement from the LFE channel. It's a playful mix that makes some of the more violent devices in the Addams household funny rather than threatening, and the track has sufficient dynamic range to render both the screams of the frightened and the thuds of some of their falls to the ground with suitable impact. The distinctive character voices are beautifully clear, and Marc Shaiman's (Hairspray) charming and romantic score (with occasional invocations of Vic Mizzy's TV theme) sounds light and airy. The only unfortunate element in the soundtrack is M.C. Hammer's "Addams Groove", which plays over the closing credits and hasn't aged well.

The Addams Family Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As on Paramount's 1999 DVD, the only extras are two trailers (480i; 1.85:1, enhanced; 1:21 & 1:28). Still missing, unfortunately, is the 1991 EPK, "The Making of The Addams Family", which was shown on TV to promote the film and which I remember seeing at the time.

The Addams Family Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As preoccupied as every Addams is with death, the family has lived on in one incarnation after another, including two animated series, a second TV series (The New Addams Family) and a direct-to-video film (Adams Family Reunion) that served as a pilot to the new series. At present, MGM is reported to be developing a full-length animated film. But just as John Astin and Carolyn Jones put an indelible stamp on the franchise in the Sixties, Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston created a Gomez and Morticia for the ages with the intensity of their passion and their devotion to family. Even as the villains have them at bay, they cannot help becoming absorbed in each other. "To live without you, only that would be torture", says Gomez. "A day alone, only that would be death", replies Morticia. "Knock it off!" says the phony Dr. Pinder-Schloss, who has no inkling of the risks she's taken by having the temerity to attack the Addams Family. Recommended.