The Addams Family 2 Review
The Addams Family 2 (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon and Laura Brousseau and starring Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler, Conrad Vernon, Wallace Shawn, Bill Hader, Brian Sommer, Griffin Burns, Courtenay Taylor, Ted Evans, Cherami Leigh, Mary Faber and Kyla Pratt.
The Addams Family 2 is a sequel that doesn’t even try to match the original animated film from 2019 let alone make an attempt to surpass it. It has multiple jokes which fall flat and they feel like they wouldn’t even appeal to a third grader. You can probably forget about this film finding a large adult audience. With that said, it’s well timed for Halloween and there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half than to see just how low this follow up movie will go in its efforts to prove the Addams family is just like your family and mine. They’re just a little more animated personality wise.
This new animated picture showcases the story of young Wednesday Addams (voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz of Tom and Jerry). She gives a great presentation at her school’s science fair but everyone who participates gets an award and she is not declared a winner for her inventive ideas. Wallace Shawn serves as the voice of a lawyer, Mr. Mustela, who tells Wednesday’s parents that their daughter may have been switched at birth and could possibly not be their real offspring. The parents are Gomez and Morticia and are voiced by Oscar Issac and Academy Award winner Charlize Theron.
The film’s plot begins with Gomez planning on taking his family cross country on a road trip. This makes for some oddball scenes such as when the characters arrive at Niagra Falls and Wednesday uses a voodoo doll to play tricks on her brother Pugsley (voiced by Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton). There’s a running gag where a man is trying to propose to his girlfriend and the Addams keep preventing him from doing so through their peculiar antics.
Nick Kroll voices the character of Uncle Fester who self published a book on how to get a girlfriend and teaches Pugsley how to try to woo girls. It is Uncle Fester to blame when Mr. Mustela’s accusations that Wednesday is not Gomez and Morticia’s daughter come into light. That’s because Uncle Fester juggled the babies in the nursery when Wednesday was born. Fester thinks he put them all back in the right place but he’s not sure.
A funny scene in the picture reminded me of the great film Little Miss Sunshine. That sequence comes when Wednesday ends up at a stage production featuring young girls about Wednesday’s age and Wednesday ends up performing on stage with a blonde wig trying to fit in. She’s hysterically awful but it’s a cute moment in a film that’s full of corny goofball jokes.
What would an Addams Family movie be without the presence of Snoop Dogg as Cousin It? Cousin It is a short mop of hair with sunglasses that could be a boy or a girl and talks indistinctly. However, Snoop Dogg’s charm as Cousin It keeps viewer interest sustainable during his scenes here. It even has a song to sing in the movie that makes for another joyful minute or two in the picture as well.
Wednesday Addams rebels against her family to go to a new one who just wants to take advantage of her scientific skills. This family is arguably not even completely human. Literally. The movie then shows us that Wednesday doesn’t want to hurt the Addams’s feelings. She just wants to know where she belongs and who her true family is. In a sentimental moment, she hugs her dad Gomez and that is a sweet scene in the film. There’s some nice messages here to be sure but they get bogged down in the movie’s awful one-liners which are so lame at times that you wonder how they got past the cutting room floor.
There is no reason to say The Addams Family 2 doesn’t have the potential to appeal to young newcomers to the material. They probably won’t think all the jokes are as clever as the filmmakers do, though. I grew up on re-runs of the old TV show and saw the live action movie versions in the theater when they came out in the early 1990’s. The recent animated films just don’t cut it for me but there is a definite audience for the film somewhere out there. And, at Halloween time, that audience may be more forgiving than at other times during the year.
Rating: 5/10
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