It's 2025 And I Just Watched The Addams Family For The First Time – These Are My Honest Thoughts

The Addams Family has been entertaining us in all its creepiness, kookiness, and spookiness for almost 100 years now, from Charles Addams' original comic strips in the 1930s up to the most recent season of "Wednesday" on Netflix. Today, the interpretation of the Addams clan and its tangled family tree that most people remember comes from the '90s film duology directed by Barry Sonnenfeld: "The Addams Family" and "Addams Family Values." Even I'd say those are the most recognizable iterations — and I hadn't even bothered to watch these movies until now!

Granted, I'm not a total Addams Family novice. I saw a handful of episodes from the 1960s "The Addams Family" TV show as a kid, one of the many older sitcoms my parents tried to hook me on as an alternative to "The Simpsons." (It didn't take.) So I've known for a long time who each member of the Addams Family is, and I recognize the da-nah-nah-nah *snap* *snap* theme on instinct. I'd also seen quotes, screencaps, and GIFs from the Sonnenfeld movies out of context over the years.

I've heard all the half-sincere wisecracks about Gomez (Raul Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) Addams being couple goals, and I knew Wednesday (Christina Ricci) was going to burn down that summer camp in "Addams Family Values." Having already seen bits and pieces from "The Addams Family" through the internet, actually watching the movie, seeing them all fit together, reminded me of when I first watched "Mean Girls" all the way through in 2023.

So between that and seeing the movie long after my formative years as a cinephile, I'd missed the chance for "The Addams Family" to have the deepest impact it could have had on me. But the movie (and the sequel) is also irresistibly amusing. I understand why, for some people who were lucky enough to see it younger and unspoiled, it became a personality-defining classic.

The most persistent praise for "The Addams Family" is for its perfect casting. Julia excellently captures Gomez's unique mix of boundless childlike energy and charm; Huston is eerie, elegant and oh-so-calm as Morticia; and Ricci's deadpan delivery as Wednesday is career-defining. I can only add a sprinkle to the mountain's worth of praise heaped on them, but I agree they earn every speck of it.

Then, conversely, the biggest criticism of the movie is its loose screenplay. I can see where that comes from, but I also ask myself, did this need to have a tight script? It's a gag-per-minute movie, the narrative mere scaffolding on which to hang as many jokes as possible about how topsy-turvy the Addams Family is. The comedy rests on the strength of the acting; the Addamses are each uniquely strange, yet each of the actors convinces you how, to this family, strange is normal.

My favorite of the jokes? It's hard to top Wednesday's name for her "game" of putting Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) in an electric chair. "It's called ... 'Is there a God?'" There's times when you can write the Addamses off as eccentric but harmless. So every moment when the movie pushes the envelope to show they aren't (like Wednesday's game) made me laugh the most. If you can't chuckle at morbidity, why watch "The Addams Family"?

I watched "Addams Family Values" the day after the original, almost back to back, and they flow together seamlessly. Yet the sequel does diminish the original film by being so similar and yet blatantly superior. (The picture's villain, Joan Cusack as black widow Debbie, definitely helps tip the scales.)

But "Addams Family Values" isn't just funnier and more tightly executed. It made the satire of the Addams Family, and why many kids felt seen by these movies, click for me. When Wednesday and Pugsley are at Camp Chippewa, they (and we) see every camper who isn't lily-white or perfectly abled be ostracized and demeaned. Of course, I realized, that's why the Addams Family is precious to real people who might be seen as "different," from goths to queer people. (The movies' screenwriter, Paul Rudnick, is gay as well.)

The Addamses are seen as outcasts and oddballs by society at large, but they're a loving, mutually supportive family who all, individually and collectively, embrace their otherness without any self-consciousness. The original show parodied the sitcom because that's the entertainment most rooted in nuclear family Americana. In carrying on that tradition, the sequel's title turns the traditionalist slogan "family values" on its head.

The satire is what makes the Thanksgiving play scene in "Addams Family Values" so perfect. Wednesday leads the Camp Chippewa rejects in overthrowing a place of rotten privilege, and they do it wearing costumes of the first-ever marginalized people in North America: the indigenous people. The scene's climax of Wednesday lighting a match as the Addams Family theme kicks in, Amanda's (Mercedes McNab) horrified apple-stuffed face? What a crescendo, even if I'm a bit peeved the film chickened out and cut away before any actual burning happens.

All in all, I had a very fun cumulative three hours watching "The Addams Family" movies. But even if I liked nothing else, Wednesday's victory in "Values" would've made it all worth it.