The Addams Family

If macabre one-liners are your poison, you should probably make a beeline for this 1991 big-budget adaptation of the Charles Addams cartoons and the TV sitcom derived from them. Otherwise there’s not much to flesh out the slender sitcom plot, and little attempt to make up for the lack of character development in the original material. Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia certainly make a sporting effort by being as charming as possible, and the director (Barry Sonnenfeld) and screenwriters (Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson) seem to have worked overtime trying to come up with fresh ideas. But it’s still an extended collection of one-liners and not much more. With Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci, Jimmy Workman, and Judith Malina. PG-13, 102 min. (JR) Read more