A Strange Halloween - Addams Family Values

A family of quite a disturbing design,

Perturbing, cooky and hardly benign,

But their status quo is about to change,

A baby can make things really deranged

Their family values are put to test

As they show their worst and their best

The Addams’ family film yet to be seen

Will be covered next on a Strange Halloween

This took a trip to a second-hand store to get a copy of, it was Netflix last year but no such luck this year  just the original and the animated one (note: it came back onto Netflix just days after I initially wrote this review - talk about bad timing).

Anyway, Addams Family Values is the sequel to the 1991 film. It released in 1993, I don’t have a lot to say about its production, only that regrettably the signs of Raul Julia’s ill health that would eventually lead to his death had already begun to show at this point. The film had a $47m budget, hoping to capture the same success the first one had but it wasn’t to be, the film floundered making only $48.1m back at the box office. That said, the critical rating was slightly higher than its predecessor. Did the film work for me, well let’s take a look?

A Strange Halloween 4 - The Addams Family (2019)

A family that’s mysterious and cooky to the end

Their antics drive their neighbours round the bend

But change can shake things to the core

You can choose to embrace it or show you abhor

A mansion of misfits, shunned by the light

Does not protect them from internal strife

A perfect reflection is yet to be seen

As we continue A Strange Halloween

After Addams Family Values, which we will be getting to, disappointed at the Box Office, the Addams family franchise was left dormant. In 2010, Illumination entertainment, best known for the blight on humanity otherwise known as the Minions, were working on creating a stop motion Addams family project, certainly an interesting take. Tim Burton was set to direct but for whatever reason it fell through. In 2013, MGM, now owners of Orion pictures, the studio behind the 90's films, announced it would be making an animated take on the cooky family.

Now, MGM has a long history of producing animation, being the studio behind the original Tom and Jerry shorts, among others but their production of late is fairly slim pickings. They’re certainly not on the same level as something like Disney or even Illumination. CG is certainly a relatively new field for them, and they were only given a $23m budget for it. Still, the film was commercially successful, earning back $203m, but it divided critics with only a 44% Rotten Tomatoes rating

So, how does this animated Addams family show up? Let’s take a look.

A Strange Halloween 4: The Addams Family

It’s back, muhahahahahahahahaha

A family of misfits, who embrace the macabre

And all things that are odd, strange and bizarre

Starting in artwork but moved to the screen

It’s an opening chapter of a Strange Halloween

The Addams family was created as a series of single panel comics by artist Charles Addams in 1938. It is no stranger to adaptation, receiving a TV series in the 1960s, with a TV movie loosely attached, an animated series in 1973, and an upcoming Netflix series helmed by the guy who was born to direct this franchise, Tim Burton. But we’re looking at the cinematic releases, starting with the 1991 film. [I won’t be covering the animated sequel, as it’ll only just have released]

The film has a notoriously troubled production, with several rewrites, and directors of photography putting the film $5m over-budget. Orion Pictures, who produced several classics such as Silence of the Lambs were sadly already in financial difficulty, sold the North American distribution rights to Paramount. And for what it’s worth, they and the international distributers MGM (who would go onto buy Orion Pictures) got a good deal out of it, the film made $190m on its $30m budget.