At a Little Miss Jalapeño Pepper contest in Texas, Wednesday, looking even more sinister under a mountain of blonde big hair, dumps red paint all over the other contestants as if this were the prom in “Carrie.” The script is by an entirely new team (Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, Ben Queen, and Susanna Fogel), and in some ineffable bats-in-the-belfry way the jokes now land with a more inspired and spontaneous creepy kookiness. But in the case of “The Addams Family 2,” Tiernan and Vernon have used the sequel as an opportunity for an upgrade. It’s in the nature of most animated sequels to struggle to recapture the full charm of the original hit. But the jokes were too safe and cozy (the movie was far less outrageous than the “Hotel Transylvania” films), and the story was thin even for a knowing piece of cobweb camp. The co-directors, Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, did a splendid job visually, returning the characters to the loopy stylized glory of the original Charles Addams cartoons. But it felt like it could have been the 13th. Two years ago, the first film in this series, “The Addams Family” (2019), was, of course, the third big-screen “Addams Family” feature, after the two live-action ones that came out in the early ’90s. Or Cyrus Strange (Bill Hader), the mad scientist who’s trying to make Wednesday his daughter, snapping at the regal Morticia, “Oh, pipe down, Elvira!” Or Gomez ( Oscar Isaac), in his Igor-as-head-waiter hodgepodge of an Old World accent, saying, “Tell that Billie Eilish she’s a little too sunny for my taste.” Or the way that Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz), that paragon of proto goth disaffection, says she’s been social distancing since birth. Take, for instance, Uncle Fester, voiced by Nick Kroll with an extreme goofy lisp, sizing up the creaky brown wood camper in which the Addams family are about to take a three-week cross-country trek and saying, “Oh, it’s a hybrid - half car, half eyesore!” Or the way that Morticia, voiced by Charlize Theron in the most musical of aristocratic purrs, doesn’t just walk but glides around in her cadaverous skin-tight dress that drapes over the floor in trails that look like black silk octopus legs. The devil is in the details - or, in “ The Addams Family 2,” a digitally animated sequel aimed at ages six and over, in the demented ghoulish sparkle of jokes that are just macabre and kiddie witty enough to tickle you.
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