Opening this weekend:
The Addams Family 2--Wednesday, the emotionally reserved daughter, is the focus of this sequel to 2019's animated adaptation of the classic Charles Addams cartoons from The New Yorker. Her exuberant clan gets on her nerves, and she's especially full of woe when her ebullient dad Gomez insists that she go on a family road trip. So when she is told that she may not be biologically an Addams, she's willing to listen.
The whole gang, almost, piles into the spacious, splendidly Gothic camper; along with Chloe Grace Moretz as Wednesday, Gomez (Oscar Isaac), Morticia (Charlize Theron), Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll) and Puggsley (Javon Walton), as well as the faithful, ever-gloomy Lurch (co-director Conrad Vernon), the ever-handy Thing, the moplike Cousin It (Snoop Dogg) and leonine pet Kitty Kat are along for the ride. Only Grandmama (Bette Midler) stays at home, to keep an eye on things (and party). Episodic wackiness ensues, as the family gets involved with everything from child pageants to bikers, while pursued by the shifty rep (Wallace Shawn) of a mad scientist (Bill Hader).
It's an above-average CGI production, with plenty of slapstick chases, fine voice acting and a standard emotional template; Wednesday gradually learns what family she wants to be part of. But the plot runs counter to the usual Addams Family schtick.
The retro-rerun network MeTV recently began airing the original Addams Family series (1964-1966), and I've watched a few episodes for the first time in decades. The show holds up amusingly, and what makes it work, I think, is that the actors don't play spooky. They have a hearty, aggressive geniality that makes them lovable--and, in the case of Carolyn Jones as Morticia, sexy--as well as funny in their macabre context. Even Ted Cassidy's baleful Lurch doesn't exactly play spooky; he's just deeply apprehensive.
The old series bounced the family's antics off of conventional midcentury banality, with the liberating suggestion that people who embraced their eccentricities might just be happier. Addams Family 2 comes to a really bizarre, shape-shifting finale, with the Addams folk in the clutches of the Dr. Moreau-like crazy scientist, that overshadows their peculiarity. Even the kiddie pageant world seems weirder than these title characters. Maybe the exposure of our culture to a couple of decades of reality TV has made the Addams Family seem normal.
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