The Addams Family 2

2019's animated take on The Addams Family was a huge disappointment for a lifelong fan of the characters such as myself, as the film was fairly generic and dull, and lacked any of the classic macabre humor from the previous attempts to bring Charles Addams' cartoons to life.  The just-released sequel, The Addams Family 2, does have a stronger mean spirit behind it, and most of the strong original cast is back for more.  But due to a meandering and unfocused plot, and a lot of lame gags, there's very little to recommend here, and even less worth watching.

I do appreciate that the film's four credited writers have added a much darker sense of humor here.  I mean, a film that attempts a PG-rated family friendly spin on the prom scene from Carrie set at a child's beauty pageant takes some major guts, as does throwing in another scene where it is hinted that little Wednesday Addams (once again voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz) has murdered one of the film's antagonists off camera.  Even with this newly added mean streak that seems perfectly in line with the Addams world, there is still just this overall aimless quality to the film that made its fairly brief 93 minute running time feel a lot longer.  Nearly every joke here doesn't work, there's a horribly blatant and nauseating product placement shot thrown into the movie for no reason other than corporate greed, and it once again misuses a phenomenal cast that, aside from Moretz, includes the likes of Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Nick Kroll, Bette Midler, Bill Hader, and Wallace Shawn.

The paper-thin plot kicks off with young Wednesday worrying that she doesn't fit in with the rest of her oddball clan.  So, family patriarch Gomez (Oscar Isaac), along with wife Morticia (Charlize Theron), young son Pugsley (Javon "Wanna" Walton), crazy Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll), and butler Lurch (the film's co-director Conrad Vernon) decide to take a three week road trip in the hopes of bringing the family together.  We get gags about Pugsley blowing up the Grand Canyon, a visit from Cousin Itt (whose squeaky speech is once again provided by rapper Snoop Dogg), and an opportunity for Lurch to sing "I Will Survive" in a falsetto voice at a biker bar.  What plot there is here mainly comes in the film's Third Act, when it's revealed that a genius inventor named Cyrus Strange (Bill Hader) may be Wednesday's true father, due to a possible mix up at the hospital caused by Fester.

There is a hollowness to The Addams Family 2 that is simply inexcusable, and it kills whatever fleeting pleasures the darker tone over its predecessor provides.  The line readings don't land, the jokes don't hit, and while I admire that the character designs seem to be somewhat inspired by the original cartoons, the animation is nothing to get excited about.  While I wasn't a fan of the 2019 film, it at least seemed to be going somewhere.  This sequel is pretty much made up of nothing but one lame gag after another of the Addams driving cross country, and then the movie decides to add in a plot asking where does Wednesday belong at the last minute, so it can pretend that there's a point to all of this.  Maybe the littlest of kids will find something to like here, but I saw a lot of parents looking at their phones rather than the screen at my showing, and as the film dragged on, I was fighting the urge to join them.

There have been attempts to bring these characters to life in the past that have failed, but due to the incredibly talented voice cast that this movie somehow managed to attract, this one feels more heinous than others.  This is a shallow and stupid experience that does a great discredit to the Addams name.

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