The Addams Family 2 (2021)

The Addams Family 2 arrives as a road-trip sequel in which a family of gothic eccentrics drives across America and argues about whether the daughter is biologically theirs. That is the entire architecture of the thing. A paternity subplot, a mad scientist, a mutating uncle, a henchman who turns out to be an old asylum acquaintance. The film proceeds with the grim efficiency of a station wagon packed to the roof.

On the question of social consciousness, the cupboard is bare. There is no racial commentary, no environmental crusade, no queerness, no body-positivity messaging. The mutation gags, in which Uncle Fester gradually becomes an octopus, are played for slapstick and nothing else. Wednesday is a capable science prodigy who drives the plot, which is a credit to a character who has been doing exactly that since the 1960s, not to any contemporary statement. The voice cast is a standard animated ensemble, diverse the way a studio booth tends to be, with no stated purpose behind it. The family's disdain for suburban conformity carries a faint anti-normative chill, but the Addamses are wealthy landowners, so no redistribution is proposed.

If the film lectures at all, it does so briefly and then apologizes. The questions of identity and belonging raised by the DNA test are settled by farce, a chicken-cow-goat-pig monster, and a toupee. That is the correct outcome. A children's comedy about a family of ghouls should not be freighted with instruction, and this one mostly refuses the freight. It is silly, it is loud, it was not successful, and it will not trouble the cultural record. We score it and move on.