Bad Movies We Love: Addams Family Values

Christina Ricci is so dark and spot-on in this movie as our sardonic Wednesday with home-school braids who greeted all situations with monotone weariness. She predated Daria, but that doesn't impress her colleagues: At the nightmarish Camp Chippewa, her frosty front disgusts her fellow campers. They all look like Olsen twin villains, of course, because it's 1993 and I'm having the time of my life.

Those are devil's bangs, wheaten-tressed little girl. And here are the devil's hand-maidens themselves, Gary Granger and Becky Martin-Granger, Camp Chippewa's head counselors the perkiest adults I've seen since the wedding of Richie Cunningham and Lori Beth Allen.

That's Peter MacNicol (the other person Sophie didn't choose) and Christine Baranski (The Good Wife's leading scowler). They torture Wednesday and Pugsley with their giddiness, and they also rub another camper named Joel the wrong way. Here's how Joel looks when he lays eyes on the preteen splendor that is Wednesday Addams's postmortem complexion.

As you might've guessed, Wednesday and Joel become close and try to escape the camp several times together. After they're punished in the "Harmony Hut" where Gary and Becky force them to watch Brady Bunch reruns and Annie, they concede to the counselors' wishes and agree to play parts in the end-of-summer play. It's Gary's self-written masterpiece, a gem about the first Thanksgiving called A Turkey Called Brotherhood. Gary introduces the piece with the following uproarious preamble: "White meat! And dark meat! Take it away!" It'd be ridiculous and offensive if it also weren't an accurate representation of every middle-school production on Earth.

Lo and behold, Wednesday plays the historically misplaced part of "Pocahontas" and improvises a Native American revolt that results in torched villages and humiliation of all blonde snobs in the vicinity. Confession: I'm sure there are high schools that would write Pocahontas into the Thanksgiving story. Honestly. And make her field insults from the pilgrims like, "We're civilized and have last names!" My high school mascot was the Injun, y'all. None of this is seeming too far-fetched yet.

That concludes the camp segment. After Wednesday and Pugsley return home for Fester and Debbie's wedding, we realize Debbie has come unhinged in her quest to kill her new husband for his money. She soon straps the entire family into electric chairs and forces them to watch a slideshow of her troubled childhood (when she received not Ballerina Barbie but Malibu Barbie and had no choice but to kill her parents) and her troubled marriages (that ended in homicide). In a genuinely far-fetched conclusion, infant Pubert scampers around the house and plugs together two frayed cords that end up electrocuting poor two-time Oscar nominee Joan Cusack. What kind of direct-to-VHS Baby Genuises tripe is that? Oh, well. The grisly-ass family is saved. Whoomp:

Fear is the correct response, Carol Kane.

Altogether, Addams Family Values is deadpan farce that belongs in the same prized cellar of silly cinema as Clue and The Brady Bunch Movie. It's in-your-face sexual subversion from a year of feel-good family romps like Rookie of the Year and Mrs. Doubtfire. Plus, it's a bad movie we love since it dispenses kooky kwips and represents a genre that ended up, uh, ruining movies in the years to come -- the sitcom rehash. But how can you not adore a film where the two leads watch over their young baby, sweetly remark, "He has my father's eyes," and drolly respond, "Gomez, take those out of his mouth"? Answer: You can't. Sorry if that's Broadcast News to you. (Go, Joan!)

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