Mark Reviews Movies: THE ADDAMS FAMILY 2

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 1, 2021

Looking at the credits of The Addams Family 2, it comes as little surprise as to what succeeds in this sequel and what doesn't. The directors of 2019's The Addams Family return, so the follow-up retains the basic look and attitude of the first animated installment. It does, at least, whenever this creepy and kooky family is simply allowed to be, well, just creepy and kooky.

That was what worked in the first movie—the feeling of watching this strange and macabre clan be as strange and macabre as the filmmakers believed they should be. Directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, who return for this entry, understood the idea and humor Charles Addams' original comic strips. We could tell, not only from the character designs (which transformed the flat caricatures of Addams' art into three-dimensional characters for computer animation), but also from the early assault of visual gags, twisted puns, and some cartoonishly gruesome suggestions or acts on the part of the Addamses.

The only thing really holding back the original movie from being a dementedly funny and amusingly wicked affair was the plot. It got in the way, gradually took over, and didn't live up to the potential of seeing the absurd Addamses interacting with the "normal" world.

As for the sequel's team of new screenwriters, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, Ben Queen, and Susanna Fogel seem to have learned the wrong lesson from this movie's predecessor. This time around, formula is in control—from the story's premise to its inevitable build toward a plot-and-action-heavy third act. Some of the Addamses have their appropriately strange moments, as the family travels across the country on an impromptu road trip. Those moments, though, become fewer and farther in between, as the screenplay misses an increasing number of opportunities for the family to be funny and, increasingly, the point of why they're funny.

Gomez (voice of Oscar Isaac), Morticia (voice of Charlize Theron), and their children have more or less settled into a new routine with the world outside their spooky manor. Daughter Wednesday (voice of Chloë Grace Mortez) and son Pugsley (voice of Javon "Wanna" Walton) go to a local school, where Wednesday is showing off her new invention at a science fair (For his part, Pugsley makes a participant's baking soda-based volcano into one with actual lava). It's a formula that can give a person the abilities of an animal, which she shows off by having her Uncle Fester (voice of Nick Kroll) be more like an octopus (As the story continues, he starts having appendages become tentacles).

Wednesday is also more annoyed—which is saying something—with Gomez's displays of pride and affection for his daughter, so to bring the family closer, he decides it's time to take their hearse-like camper on a trip across the country. With butler Lurch (voice of Vernon) and the disembodied hand that is Thing (Cousin It, voiced by Snoop Dogg, briefly shows up, while Grandma, voiced by Bette Midler, throws a party at home—both pretty useless and distracting subplots), they'll see Salem, Sleepy Hollow, the grand nothingness of the Grand Canyon, and other places, before arriving in the happiest place in the United States: Death Valley.

Meanwhile, a pesky lawyer (voice of Wallace Shawn) is following the Addams clan. His client is convinced that Wednesday was swapped at birth (A flashback has Uncle Fester showing off his talent for calming crying babies by juggling them). As unlikely as it may seem, she might not be a real Addams.

While the road-trip setup is pretty uninspired, there is at least and theoretically some comedic potential in it. A stop at Niagara Falls, for example, has Gomez fascinated by the idea of a death-defying-or-guaranteeing trip over the water in a barrel and Wednesday tormenting Pugsley by making him dance—and giving him a terribly painful wedgie—by way of a voodoo doll. Wednesday's constant—and often potentially fatal—pranks on her brother are, perhaps, the closet the movie gets at the grim humor that we expect from these characters.

Indeed, it's odd how little the likes of Gomez, Morticia, and Pugsley actually figure into the story and the gags in this installment. It's as if the eventual plot, which has to do with Wednesday's possible genetic connection to a different family, overtook the screenwriters' understanding of how the movie should function. To be sure, Wednesday and Moretz's deadpan delivery are funny, but even that character is eventually let down by joke setups—the girl looking for a fight a roadhouse—that go nowhere—Lurch breaking into a disco number. Apart from Fester trying to teach Pugsley how to attract girls, every other character seems waiting for big moments that never arrive.

The Addams Family 2 takes and expands the wrong lessons from its predecessor. The Addams family and their macabre ways certainly can be restrained by routine and formula. They also definitely shouldn't be.

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