The Addams Family on the big screen has been a tale of diminishing returns. After Barry Sonnenfeld’s hugely enjoyable live-action brace and 2019’s likeable animated origin story, The Addams Family 2, directed by the Sausage Party pairing of Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, along with Laura Brousseau, is a further dilution of the tone and genius of Charles Addams’ 1938 New Yorker comic strip. The superfluous sequel is neither creepy, kooky, mysterious or spooky (not to mention ooky) — it’s just plain old bland.
The story is a paper-thin affair as Gomez (Oscar Isaac), feeling Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) is drifting away from him, announces the family are going on a road trip in a Wacky Races-styled camper van to — where else? — Death Valley. So, there are stop-offs at Niagara Falls (bobbing around in barrels malarkey), Miami (Snoop Dogg’s Cousin It shows up on a jet ski), San Antonio (Wednesday enters a Miss Jalapeno pageant that ends like Carrie’s prom) and the Grand Canyon (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton’s Pugsley blows shit up).
The film’s biggest crime is to shave off any of the edges that marked out Charles Addams’ original work.
The plot driver, as it is, revolves around a lawyer who looks just like Wallace Shawn (happily voiced by him too) chasing down the clan in order to get Wednesday to undergo a DNA test to prove she is not an Addams (the reason for this is obvious from the get-go). Meanwhile, Pugsley is taking dating tips from Nick Kroll’s Uncle Fester (monumentally unfunny) and Bette Midler, as Grandma Addams, is throwing a raucous house party while housesitting the family mansion (marginally funnier).
The only joy comes from Moretz’s droll, withering line readings (“I’ve been social distancing since birth”, “Excuse me, vacuous lemmings”) and a running gag about a couple getting engaged. The rest is a hodgepodge of musical interludes (Megan Thee Stallion rubs shoulders with oldies: Pugsley being voodoo-dolled about to House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’; Lurch belting out Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ at a biker bar), random pop-cultural touchstones (a Jaws dolly zoom gag, a Billie Eilish riff), dull slapstick (Fester drops his ‘balls’ while juggling) and colourless voice performances, surprisingly from Isaac and Charlize Theron, capturing nothing of Gomez and Morticia’s chemistry and passion.
But the film’s biggest crime is to shave off any of the edges that marked out Charles Addams’ original work. There’s a sentimentality at play here that feels completely at odds with the spirit of the source. Even within its PG framework there could be a sense of the macabre, strangeness and irreverence that lies at the dark heart of the first family of frights. Instead, it’s flavourless, kid-friendly animation that could come from anyone. Perhaps Wednesday isn’t the only one who needs to take a DNA test.
