‘Addams Family Values’
While the Christmas canon remains as overstuffed as ever, America’s cultural turkey remains ironically under-stuffed when it comes to movies that capture the spirit of Thanksgiving. Allow us, then, to present Addams Family Values — which celebrates its 25th anniversary on November 19 — as the antidote to unsatisfying Turkey Day viewing. The bulk of Addams Family Values involves Fester (Christopher Lloyd) marrying his nephew’s gold-digging nanny, Debbie (Joan Cusack), followed by her attempts to isolate him from his family. It features one of the all-time great comedic performances by Cusack, and I’m not even kidding a little. The movie’s worth it for her alone, and if it weren’t, it’d be worth it for Anjelica Huston’s bulletproof deadpan as Morticia (“But Debbie … pastels?”) And then there’s the subplot that sends the Addams kids to camp, and Wednesday (Christina Ricci) oversees a hostile takeover of the Thanksgiving Day pageant that features a Native American revenge scenario worth of Tarantino.