Was there a good reason for me to sit through The Addams Family 2? Probably not, especially since I don’t have a kid. The first movie came out two years ago, and it wasn’t much of a surprise it manages to be the worst-animated movie of that year. Because nobody liked it, judging from the mixed reviews, it was an unlikely feeling we were getting a sequel to everyone’s favorite weird family that’s kooky and spooky. As someone who didn’t enjoy his time watching the original, it was no shock I felt the same way here.
What’s the Story: As we see the return of the Addams, Morticia (voiced by Charlize Theron) and Gomez (Oscar Isaac) starting to get worried that their children-Wednesday (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (voiced by Javon “Wanna” Walton)- are growing up too fast when they’re dealing with other stuff in their personal lives. In the hope of bringing everyone back together, Gomez plans to take the family on a cross-country vacation across the U.S. in their haunted camper.
Even though it has Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon back to direct and a new group of writers is involved, I don’t know if this would be any improvement for a sequel based on Charles Addams’ creation. The thought of having the titular family going on a trip to various pit stops could’ve made for some amusement with their unnatural way of living with ordinary people in their surroundings. Instead, we got them going to these locations to serve up some wacky hijinks that will only entertain the children. Something about the story here doesn’t give it enough life to make it enjoyable to follow through. But besides them going on this trip (the standard protocol for an animated sequel), we also have this lawyer (voiced by Wallace Shawn) following them trying to get to Wednesday to claim she was switched at birth. Even then, she’s starting to wonder if she even considers herself a true Addams. The movie focuses more on Wednesday, and it doesn’t make sense why these animated movies just make her boring to care about. Where that goes, later on, seems rather pathetic when it doesn’t feel like one to watch during the Halloween season.
The voice cast is going their beset in reprising their characters from the original, even though they did it for a paycheck deep down, probably. I liked Oscar Issac and Charlize Theron once again as Gomez and Morticia. Still, they make for a great pairing if they wanted to go the live-action route. Others from Moretz as Wednesday, Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester, and Snoop Dogg as Cousin IT did a fine job, with Snoop getting more dialogue despite being gibberish. But when you have Bill Hader in an cartoon and you don’t give him funny material to work with, that’s a sin right there.
But just like before with the animation and the times it desperately wants to be funny, it’s never getting a compliment from me. Once again, the animation from Cinesite Studios still looks cheap, and it never stands out in every scene, which leads me to question if they were working on a bigger budget. And all of the humor falls completely flat when it tries to throw in stupid pop-culture jokes that made me groan loudly for no reason. You can also tell this was a rushed production when there were two COVID-related jokes. Some of the running gags didn’t land either, whether it’s the dozens of times Pugsley constantly getting hurt or when a guy is proposing to his girlfriend. The movie made me stopped caring once Lurch changes his voice to sing “I Will Survive” inside a biker bar that came out of nowhere and a dance number to fill up the runtime.
Honestly, the only reason why this was made was because the first was profitable. If you really want something better than The Addams Family 2, then give a watch to Addams Family Values instead since that’s regarded as a better comedy sequel that got good laughs. Kids will definitely have fun watching this if they did with the first movie. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really improve upon anything, and there are many better-animated movies worth your time more this year. Just please let there not be a third movie for the sake of us.
Final Thoughts: The Addams Family 2 lives up to being nothing but an unremarkable animated sequel no one asked for. Almost everything from the lame jokes to the bland story is enough to skip it altogether. As a result, it’s more or less the same as its predecessor, which is also bad.
DC's Take 