It’s togetherness Addams style, and Pubert just keeps gurgling happily. In the main story line, love comes to Gomez’s doorknobheaded brother, Fester (Christopher Lloyd), in the sumptuous shape of Debbie Jelinsky (Joan Cusack), a nanny who’s really a notorious husband-killer. The virginal Fester falls doorknob-over-heels, they marry and set off in their car, to which the celebrants have merrily tied a corpse. The chief conjugal event of the honeymoon is attempted spousicide, and events escalate to a showdown between Debbie and the Addams clan. The latter has no objection to Debbie’s lethal instincts: “You have placed Fester under some strange sexual spell,” says Morticia. “I can respect that.” What offends them is Debbie’s tacky taste–her pink furbelows, the blond wig she makes Fester wear.
Paul Rudnick’s clever screenplay is deftly cartoonified by director Barry Sonnenfeld. There are nice bits for ail the Addamses: Granny (Carol Kane), Lurch the butler (Carel Struvcken) and Thing, the family’s handyman without a man. If you put each Addams on a T shirt, I’d want the one with Huston, who makes Morticia a pure grande (guignol) dame, an aristocrat to the graveyard born.
I HAVE BEEN HALF IN LOVE WITH easeful Death," wrote John Keats. No halfway measures for Bruce Joel Rubin: Death seems to be his main squeeze. Rubin wrote “Ghost,” in which Patrick Swayze was a posthumous bero, and “Jacob’s Ladder,” in which Tim Robbins was a prehumous one. in My Life, which he wrote and directed, Rubin gives us a Los Angeles public-relations man, Bob Jones (Michael Keaton), who learns he’s dying of cancer as his wife, Gail (Nicole Kidman), is pregnant with their first child. Fighting to stay alive until the baby is born, Bob makes a series of videotapes as a legacy for his child.
This is called a tear-jerker, an ancient and sometimes honorable genre. What lends honor to “My Life” is Rubin’s touch, tact, humor and dignity. He doesn’t squeeze your tear ducts, he caresses them. They will respond. Only a diehard Terminatornik could resist Keaton earnestly explaining to his unborn son why his mom might remarry even though she loves Daddy. Or starting to advise the kid about sex and turning off the camera in embarrassment. Keaton is an ideal die-er with his chin-scratching, eyebrow-arching, mouth-gaping way of casualty expressing real emotion. And Kidman has enormous appeal with her great movie face and glowing strength. Sometimes the film overglows: Gail’s doctor has a smile so full of caring it may give you hypoglycemia.
But mostly “My Life” works on its own terms. The film’s ending has a certain courage as Rubin looks death in the eyes. One other thing. Jones’s Sony video camera is practically a character, and cynics may see the film as one long commercial for Sony, which owns Columbia, the releasing studio. Could it be that a smart Sony exec, knowing Rubin’s death fetish. suggested the idea to their mutual benefit? Nah, only Robert Altman would dream up a scenario like that. But just in case, enjoy the movie and go buy a Panasonic.
