Addams Family Values

Barry Sonnenfeld’s sequel runs two tracks that barely touch: the nanny Debbie closing in on Fester, and the summer camp where Wednesday and Pugsley are dumped. The camp track is the sharper one and rests almost entirely on Christina Ricci, so the middle stretch belongs to the children and Debbie rather than to Gomez and Morticia. The real climax is not the finale but the camp’s Thanksgiving pageant. Screenwriter Paul Rudnick wrote the lyrics for that number and Marc Shaiman the music; Mercedes McNab, who plays Amanda, says the sequence took about two weeks to shoot. The title was not random either: Anjelica Huston’s memoir records that it answers the family values rhetoric of the 1992 campaign. The sets were built by Ken Adam, designer of Dr. No, Goldfinger and the War Room in Dr. Strangelove. Adam and set decorator Marvin March were nominated for the Oscar in Art Direction, the name the category carried that year. Commercially the sequel fell far short: 48.9 million dollars in North America against 113.5 million for the 1991 film. A good fit if you enjoy Joan Cusack playing Debbie not as a monster but as a flawless suburban brochure who never once winks at the camera. Not for anyone who wants Gomez and Morticia held at the centre throughout.