Now that the Addams family have gotten the whole is Fester really Fester issue out of the way, they can go on with their lives, and now that there's a baby, they've got another issue: the other children want the baby dead! Gomez and Morticia decide to get a nanny (a child sitter, not a goat, to paraphrase Ricky Ricardo), and like the Von Trapp children (but in a more demonic way), Pugsly and (especially) Wednesday come up with clever ways of getting rid of each one, more foolish than the one before. When one European lady comes in with a puppet, it's not surprising that Wednesday has a puppet of her own, and it ain't close to Lambchops. Then in walks Joan Cusack, the cheery, blonde beauty with a perfect response to every question, yet all too perfect to be trusted. The film switches cleverly into two subplots as Cusack has Pugsly and Wednesday sent off to summer camp while she plots a way to win Uncle Fester's heart so she can cook his hide to get her grubby little paws on his fortune and Pugsly and Wednesday deal with the freaky "normal" people they encounter at camp as only an Addams can.
"I'm not perky", Ricci says as Wednesday, after sitting through Disney movies and every family musical ever made, smiling evilly which sends one obnoxious little blonde girl into hysterics. Of course, she earlier got the better of them too when she adds her own twist to a ghost story that is every little rich girl's fear, already having failed to jump into the water to save the "little miss perfect" from drowning during a life-saving course. Peter MacNichol and Christine Baranski are delightfully obnoxious as the cheerful but snooty moderators of the summer camp, treating each blue eyed/blonde haired boy and girl as if they were the second coming of Christ and any one else as freaks of nature. It's up to Pugsly, Wednesday and their nerdy friend (David Krumholtz) to turn the tables on this group of freaky up-scales so they can rush back and save Fester from a fate worse than life.
The Addams kids rule in this sequel with Gomez and Morticia slightly more in the background in spite of a hot dance sequence in a restaurant that looks like a cave. Joan Cusack is a delightful villain, with Lloyd hysterical as Uncle Fester trying to impress her with his walrus impression. (I hope she hadn't planned on eating those bread-sticks...) Carol Kane takes over the role of Grandma Addams, getting in a few witty lines here and there, highly reminding me of Jackie Hoffman's portrayal of Grandma in the Broadway musical version. Speaking of that, there's a delightful surprise cameo by none other than the future Gomez of Broadway himself, Nathan Lane, playing ironically a police officer who encounters Gomez and Morticia while they're trying to save Fester. I wasn't sure if it was the fact he was in this or playing a police officer that was more of a surprise.
Broadway veteran Harriet Harris is also present as the snobbish mother of the perky but obnoxious child whom Ricci makes sure has a delightful come-uppance in the Thanksgiving Day musical play MacNichol and Baranski put on at camp. When Ricci adds in her own two cents for the treatment of the Indians, it added a lot of intelligent humanity to her somewhat devilish character. Of course, she won me over in the first film when she was selling lemonade and asked the girl scout if her cookies were made out of real girl scouts and told another little girl in the hospital that it wasn't the stork that brought her a new sibling, it was the fact that her parents had sex. Watching Ricci get even with the type of kids that made a lot of other kids miserable throughout their school years is poetic justice indeed, especially if it warns those like these twit-wits that this, too, could happen to you! Then, there's the camp counselors who may smile, laugh, jump and sing, but are as racist and perhaps even more evil than the Addams could ever think of being.
In many ways, this isn't only better than the original, it's even twice as fun. There's a sense of dark comedy here that might raise eyebrows of audiences looking for good, clean fun, but as I stated in my review of the first movie, it's all innocent and a creative take on the original T.V. series and comic books. It's also sad, being one of Raul Julia's last films, and reminded me of the memory of the original Morticia (Carolyn Jones) who continued to work up almost until her death while fighting cancer on the daytime soap opera "Capitol". Dana Ivey returns, now Mrs. Cousin It Addams, with a little hairy bundle of joy. There's a delightfully sick but funny gag involving Lurch and the huge cake for Fester's bachelor party, and the finale scene with Ricci and Krumholtz might result in the viewer having the spit-take to end all spit-takes.
"I'm not perky", Ricci says as Wednesday, after sitting through Disney movies and every family musical ever made, smiling evilly which sends one obnoxious little blonde girl into hysterics. Of course, she earlier got the better of them too when she adds her own twist to a ghost story that is every little rich girl's fear, already having failed to jump into the water to save the "little miss perfect" from drowning during a life-saving course. Peter MacNichol and Christine Baranski are delightfully obnoxious as the cheerful but snooty moderators of the summer camp, treating each blue eyed/blonde haired boy and girl as if they were the second coming of Christ and any one else as freaks of nature. It's up to Pugsly, Wednesday and their nerdy friend (David Krumholtz) to turn the tables on this group of freaky up-scales so they can rush back and save Fester from a fate worse than life.
The Addams kids rule in this sequel with Gomez and Morticia slightly more in the background in spite of a hot dance sequence in a restaurant that looks like a cave. Joan Cusack is a delightful villain, with Lloyd hysterical as Uncle Fester trying to impress her with his walrus impression. (I hope she hadn't planned on eating those bread-sticks...) Carol Kane takes over the role of Grandma Addams, getting in a few witty lines here and there, highly reminding me of Jackie Hoffman's portrayal of Grandma in the Broadway musical version. Speaking of that, there's a delightful surprise cameo by none other than the future Gomez of Broadway himself, Nathan Lane, playing ironically a police officer who encounters Gomez and Morticia while they're trying to save Fester. I wasn't sure if it was the fact he was in this or playing a police officer that was more of a surprise.
Broadway veteran Harriet Harris is also present as the snobbish mother of the perky but obnoxious child whom Ricci makes sure has a delightful come-uppance in the Thanksgiving Day musical play MacNichol and Baranski put on at camp. When Ricci adds in her own two cents for the treatment of the Indians, it added a lot of intelligent humanity to her somewhat devilish character. Of course, she won me over in the first film when she was selling lemonade and asked the girl scout if her cookies were made out of real girl scouts and told another little girl in the hospital that it wasn't the stork that brought her a new sibling, it was the fact that her parents had sex. Watching Ricci get even with the type of kids that made a lot of other kids miserable throughout their school years is poetic justice indeed, especially if it warns those like these twit-wits that this, too, could happen to you! Then, there's the camp counselors who may smile, laugh, jump and sing, but are as racist and perhaps even more evil than the Addams could ever think of being.
In many ways, this isn't only better than the original, it's even twice as fun. There's a sense of dark comedy here that might raise eyebrows of audiences looking for good, clean fun, but as I stated in my review of the first movie, it's all innocent and a creative take on the original T.V. series and comic books. It's also sad, being one of Raul Julia's last films, and reminded me of the memory of the original Morticia (Carolyn Jones) who continued to work up almost until her death while fighting cancer on the daytime soap opera "Capitol". Dana Ivey returns, now Mrs. Cousin It Addams, with a little hairy bundle of joy. There's a delightfully sick but funny gag involving Lurch and the huge cake for Fester's bachelor party, and the finale scene with Ricci and Krumholtz might result in the viewer having the spit-take to end all spit-takes.