The Addams Family 2 (2021) Review

“Creepy, kooky, and stuck on a road trip nobody asked for.”

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we? 🎬

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Non-Spoiler Plot Overview 🦇

If the first animated Addams outing wasn’t underwhelming enough, 2021 gave us The Addams Family 2, a sequel that somehow manages to be even more hollow. The premise sounds promising on paper: Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) feel their kids are drifting away, so they pack up Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz), Pugsley (Javon Walton), Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll), and the rest of the clan into a haunted RV for a cross-country road trip.

Sounds fun, right? Addamses out of their spooky mansion and unleashed on America? It should’ve been a playground for dark comedy. Instead, what we get is a bland, noisy road trip comedy that forgets the Addamses are supposed to be the opposite of normal. Instead of sharpening their weirdness against the “ordinary” world, the film leans on recycled jokes, cheap slapstick, and subplots that feel like filler.

It’s not creepy, it’s not kooky — it’s just exhausting.


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Character Rundown 🕷️

Gomez Addams (Oscar Isaac) – Once again, he looks like he crawled out of a sewer. Raul Julia’s Gomez was a passionate hurricane; John Astin’s Gomez was mischievous charm. Isaac’s animated Gomez? Bloated, sleazy, and somehow lifeless even with Isaac’s voice behind him.

Morticia Addams (Charlize Theron) – Charlize should’ve been perfect casting, but this script reduces Morticia to a few dry one-liners. The elegance, the commanding aura, the iconic eye-light shots? Completely absent.

Wednesday Addams (Chloë Grace Moretz) – The supposed star of this sequel, but written like a Tumblr YA lead instead of the sinister deadpan Ricci made iconic. She spends most of the film sulking through a recycled “maybe I’m not really an Addams” subplot.

Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll) – Reduced to nothing but butt jokes and mutant slapstick. Christopher Lloyd’s Fester once honored the black-and-white sitcom; this version dishonors him with every scene.

Pugsley Addams (Javon Walton), Grandmama (Bette Midler), Lurch (Conrad Vernon), Thing – All sidelined into meaningless gags. Pugsley gets a half-baked “how to talk to girls” subplot that plays like it was written in five minutes. Grandmama and Lurch barely exist, and Thing is just… there.


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Pacing / Episode Flow ⏱️

As a road trip movie, you’d expect some momentum — but the film crawls. It stumbles from one random location to the next with no real thread tying it all together. The Addamses go to Niagara Falls, Texas, and Miami, but instead of clever fish-out-of-water satire, every stop feels like filler. The jokes don’t land, the “emotional beats” are flat, and the final act rushes into nonsense that feels like it belongs in another movie entirely.


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The Animation Problem 🎨👎

Let’s be honest: this movie is ugly. Gomez is a bloated caricature, Morticia looks like a walking toothpick, and even Wednesday — who should be the easiest design to get right — looks flat and uninspired. The textures are plasticky, the lighting is harsh, and the characters move with the stiffness of cheap Halloween toys.

It doesn’t feel gothic or spooky, just cheap. The Addamses deserve artistry — this looks like it was outsourced to the bargain bin.


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Pros ✅

There are maybe two things worth mentioning: the RV design is fun, and every once in a while, an Addams gag almost works. That’s it.


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Cons ❌

Ugly animation, flat writing, cheap jokes, pacing that drags, and character arcs that feel like CW rejects. This is a road trip where the wheels fall off before you even leave the driveway.


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Final Thoughts 💭

The Addams Family 2 (2021) had potential: the road trip premise could’ve been a fun excuse to throw the Addamses against American “normality” and let their weirdness shine. Instead, it’s a slog. The characters feel like parodies of themselves, the jokes fall flat, the animation is hideous, and the Addams spark is nowhere to be found.

If the Addamses are supposed to be timeless, this film makes them feel like they’ve overstayed their welcome.


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Rating ⭐

2/10.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning ⚠️

From here on, we’re diving coffin-deep into the full story — spoilers ahead.


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Spoilers 💀

The film opens with Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) already questioning if she really belongs in the Addams family. At a school science fair, she unveils an experiment swapping traits between people — and of course, it horrifies the judges. Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) try to cheer her up, but the distance between them grows, setting up the tired “maybe she’s not really an Addams” arc that dominates the movie.

Gomez, terrified of losing his daughter’s affection, decides a family road trip will fix everything. He crams the whole clan into a haunted RV — Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley (Javon Walton), Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll), and Thing — and off they go across America. On paper, this should’ve been a riot: Addamses clashing with “normal” landmarks like Niagara Falls and Miami. In execution, it’s just a string of lazy jokes. Niagara Falls? They blow it up for a gag. Texas? Yeehaw, but gothic. Miami? A dance sequence that feels ripped out of a bad kids’ cartoon.

Meanwhile, Pugsley is given a subplot about learning how to impress girls, which boils down to repeated slapstick and him blowing stuff up. Uncle Fester mutates from Wednesday’s experiment, growing tentacles and squawking like a chicken, serving as comic relief in the worst possible way. Morticia floats around making quips, but does nothing of importance.

The main “twist” comes when Wednesday starts believing she might have been switched at birth. A rich scientist claims she’s his daughter and not an Addams at all, and the film wastes half its runtime on this painfully generic identity crisis plot. By the time it’s revealed that no, she really is an Addams after all, you’ve already stopped caring.

The finale piles on the nonsense: Fester’s mutation turns into a full-blown kaiju gag, the villain’s plan collapses, Wednesday accepts her family again, and Gomez and Morticia’s passionless romance limps into the credits. It’s not funny, it’s not heartwarming, it’s just loud and exhausting.

When the credits roll, you’re left with a film that somehow manages to be uglier and emptier than its predecessor — a road trip straight to nowhere.