7/10
Christina Ricci steals very funny sequel with her subversive summer camp storyline
24 July 2018
I hadn't seen this film in years and it holds up quite well. The story involves gold-digging black widow Joan Cusack worming her way into the family by way of seducing Christopher Lloyd's Uncle Fester. Cusack then tricks Gomez and Morticia into thinking Pugsley and Wednesday want to go to summer camp, which results in the film's funniest moments, mainly of which involve super enthusiastic and positive camp counselors Peter MacNicole and Christine Baranski trying to convert the two glum children into Shiny Happy People. My favorite part of their conversion therapy is when they're forced to watch the John Huston film version of "Annie." The film cuts between Pugsley and Wednesday's adventures at camp with Cusack plotting to kill Fester and take the family fortune. Both stories are quite funny, but the camp moments are especially good. The funniest moment of the camp storyline, and probably the film in general, is when the campers perform a re-enactment of the "First Thanksgiving" where all of the blond hair, blue eyed campers play the Pilgrims and the camp misfits play the Indians, when Wednesday, a scene stealing 12-year old Christina Ricci, as Pocahontas and her awkward boyfriend go off-script, turning this syrupy (and historically invacuate) play into a story or revenge for the future evils perpetrated upon Native Americans by these European immigrants, complete with Wednesday's crew burning the village set to the ground and burning Pilgrim leader Mercedes McNab at the stake. Although Riccci clearly steal the film, the rest of the cast is pretty amazing as well, including Anjelica Huston as Morticia Addams and Raul Julia as Gomez Addams, Carol Kane as Grandma, and supporting parts for Sam McMurray, Nathan Lane, Cynthia Nixon, David Hyde Piers, Peter Graves, and Tony Shalhoub. The film is not quite a comedy classic, but it's undeniably entertaining and more darkly funny than most Hollywood comedies.
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