Addams Family Values Plot

Addams Family Values (1993) is an Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated sequel to the 1991 comedy The Addams Family. The movie was written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and many cast members from the original returned for the sequel, including Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston and Christina Ricci. Compared to the previous movie, which has a madcap approach comparable to the 1960s sitcom, Values is darker and more macabre, more like Charles Addams' original comic strips.

At the beginning of the film, Morticia gives birth to a new baby boy, Pubert Addams. When Wednesday and Pugsley jealously try to kill him, Morticia and Gomez hire a nanny named Debbie Jellinsky, who is really a fortune hunter/serial killer known as "The Black Widow". When invited to welcome her Wednesday says "Be afraid, be very afraid". Debbie is after Uncle Fester and the vast Addams Fortune. When Wednesday begins to suspect this, Debbie convinces Morticia to send both the older children to Camp Chippewa, a summer camp for privileged children.

Debbie marries Fester, then tries repeatedly to kill him. However, as an Addams, he is practically indestructible, and he mistakes her murder attempts for ordinary affection. Frustrated, Debbie turns nasty, and tells Fester she won't have sexual intercourse with him unless he promises never to see his family again. In anguish, he agrees.

With Uncle Fester gone, Gomez goes into a decline, and Pubert comes down with a "disease" that makes him blond, rosy, and cheerful. A horrified Gomez learns that his son might even develop dimples. After the Addams' visit Fester, only to be turned away, Gomez takes to his bed, weeping and singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

Meanwhile, at camp, Wednesday and Pugsley are uncomfortable; Wednesday, however, does meet a soulmate of sorts in the person of Joel, an introverted Jewish boy plagued by allergies. When Wednesday refuses to play Pocahontas in the end-of-summer play (a salute to Thanksgiving penned by one of the counsellors and entitled A Turkey Called Brotherhood), all three "little outcasts" are locked in the "Harmony Hut" and forced to watch a The Sound of Music, The Brady Bunch, Annie, and a series of Disney movies. When they finally emerge, pale and dishevelled, Wednesday tells the counsellors in level tones that she wants to be perky, and sing, and dance, and be Pocahontas; she then summons up a ghastly smile, frightening the other children. During the play however, the misfits of the camp, led by Wednesday, launch a surprise attack, taking over the camp and setting it on fire. Afterwards, Wednesday and Pugsley make their escape and hurry home.

Meanwhile, when Debbie blows up her new house with Fester inside, only to see him emerge smiling from the smoke, she loses her temper entirely, brandishes a gun, and snarls "I want you dead, and I want your money!" He escapes, with Thing at the wheel (and pedals) of Debbie's Lincoln. However, she follows him in hot pursuit to the Addams mansion, where she ties everyone to electric chairs - except Pubert, who returns to normal as soon as Fester comes home. Pubert escapes from his nursery and crosses the wires, so that when Debbie throws the switch to electrocute everyone, she is incinerated, leaving only a pile of ashes, her shoes, and a couple of credit cards.

In the epilogue, Gomez and Morticia give Pubert a birthday party. Among the guests is a potential new love for Fester, a bald nanny named Dementia. Joel, dressed like Gomez, also attends. Later, Joel and Wednesday are in the graveyard. He asks her if she would ever want to get married and have children, to which she flatly says no. He then asks her, "What if you found a guy who would do anything for you, who would be your devoted slave?" and she responds, "I'd pity him." Joel lets the subject drop and kneels in front of Debbie's grave, commenting that she was 'sick'. Wednesday informs him that Debbie wasn't sick, but sloppy, and that if she, Wednesday, wanted to kill her husband, she would do so, and wouldn't be caught. Joel asks her how, and she replies, "I'd scare him to death." Joel laughs this off, and proceeds to place flowers on Debbie's grave. Before he can, however, a hand bursts out of the ground and grabs Joel's arm, while Wednesday looks on, satisfied with Joel's screams.

Raúl Juliá, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci, Christopher Hart, Carel Struycken and Jimmy Workman, who all reprise their roles as, respectively, Gomez, Morticia, Fester, Wednesday Addams, Thing, Lurch and Pugsley. In addition, Dana Ivey's character, Margaret Addams (Alford in the original film; now married to Cousin Itt) makes a return appearance.

Carol Kane replaces Judith Malina in the role of Grandmama Addams. Joan Cusack co-stars as professional black widow Debbie Jellinsky, and David Krumholtz plays Wednesday's love interest, Joel Glicker.

Peter MacNicol, Christine Baranski, Mercedes McNab, and Harriet Sansom Harris have supporting roles; Peter Graves, director Barry Sonnenfeld, Nathan Lane, Tony Shalhoub and David Hyde Pierce have cameo roles. Mercedes McNab, who appeared as the girl scout in the first film, appears as the character Amanda Buckman.

Various scenes appeared in the trailers that did not appear in the final film. This included Debbie lying on the black tablet and Morticia says "Scream if you need anything..." The scene then continues with metal locks sealing her arms and neck to the tablet and then she screams for help. There is an alternative take of Wednesday saying "Our parents had sex..." in the Hospital scene. As well as an ommited scene from the wedding. All of these are partially seen on the DVD's Trailer section.

The book Joel is caught reading while put in the Harmony Hut is Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. David Krumholtz now has a starring role as a mathematician whose abilities manifested in early childhood on the CBS series Numb3rs. The series also stars Peter MacNicol as Krumholtz's mentor, a physicist and cosmologist.