The Addams Family is creeping up again. This time she not only spreads her gloom around her gruesome family villa. With their road trip, the Addams mainly want to get over a horror themselves: puberty.
Berlin – Puberty is an ordeal for many families – this also applies to the dark and eerie Addams clan.
The melancholy Wednesday quarrels with her family and would like to leave everyone (s) behind; her clumsy brother Pugsley is drawn to girls, but earns only scorn and ridicule. What do good parents do in such a situation? You are going on a family road trip in a motorhome to really take time for each other! Can that go well?
The answer is provided by the animated film “The Addams Family 2”, which will be released in German cinemas on Thursday (November 18) – almost three weeks after Halloween, which is actually a little late. But the timing of the film in this country (in the USA the film was already shown in October) is not the biggest problem of the production, but the undecided storyline. Unlike in the first part two years ago, in which the successful main story was the coexistence of “monsters” and “normal people”, the directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan try to pack too much into the sequel this time.
In addition to the pubescent family confusion, there are many threads that easily get tangled: Wednesday has successfully experimented with transferring the personality of a hyper-intelligent octopus to her simple uncle Fester, which is why Fester is gradually transforming. At the same time, the unscrupulous scientist Cyrus Strange wants to pull Wednesday to his side with a nasty lie because of this successful experiment. Pugsley, on the other hand, fails grandly with Uncle Fester’s flirting tips. Vetter It jets around the world as a pop megastar. And Grandma Addams is organizing a mega party for the party people in the creepy family villa. Less mass and instead concentration on the essentials would probably have been better here.
This weakness in the script is at least noticeable to adult viewers in the animation re-edition of the Addams Family story, which is over 80 years old. Children, on the other hand, should surely have fun again with the still very funny and absurd characters, the rough jokes and fast car chases across America. And adults can also enjoy funny sayings and scenarios. Running gags like a marriage proposal screwed up again and again by the Addams, blowing up the “not that big” Grand Canyon or checking in the Addams at the “AlaMotel” instead of the historic “Alamo” always cause laughter. The ice-cold hand as a family chauffeur, who suffers from microsleep just as much as real people, is a nice idea.
In addition, the figures are again animated very vividly and drawn lovingly at an angle. The hot-blooded love of the unequal couple Morticia and Gomez Addams is also beautifully celebrated. So if you can overlook the weaknesses in the story line, you have one and a half hours of enjoyable cinema with the Addams and the children of elementary school age.
– Die Addams Family 2, USA 2021, 93 min., FSK from 6 years, by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan, with the German voices of Luisa Wietzorek, Oliver Szerkus, Katrin Fröhlich, Alexander Doerin. dpa
