The Addams Family on the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous screen has been a tale of diminishing returns. After Barry Sonnenfeld’s hugely enjoyable live-action brace and 2019’s likeable animated origin story, The Addams Family 2, directed by the Sausage Party pairing of Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, along with Laura Brousseau, is a further dilution of the tone and genius of Charles Addams’ 1938 New Yorker comic strip. The superfluous sequel is neither creepy, kooky, mysterious or spooky (not to mention ooky) — it’s just plain old bland.###The story is a paper-thin affair as Gomez (Oscar Isaac), feeling Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) is drifting away from him, announces the family are going on a road trip in a Wacky Races-styled camper van to — where else? — Death Valley. So, there are stop-offs at Niagara Falls (bobbing around in barrels malarkey), Miami (Snoop Dogg’s Cousin It reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue s up on a jet ski), San Antonio (Wednesday enters a Miss Jalapeno pageant that ends like Carrie’s prom) and the Grand Canyon (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton’s Pugsley blows shit up).###The film’s enormous’vast’massive’tremendous gest crime is to spossess’own’nurse off any of the edges that marked out Charles Addams’ original work.###The plot propel r, as it is, revolves around a lawyer who looks just like Wallace Shawn (happily voiced by him too) chasing down the clan in an attempt to acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure Wednesday to undergo a DNA test to prove she is not an Addams (the reason in/with regard to’concerning’regarding this is obvious from the acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure -go). Meanwhile, Pugsley is taking dating tips from Nick Kroll’s Uncle Fester (monumentally unfunny) and Bette Midler, as Grandma Addams, is throwing a raucous house party while housesitting the family mansion (marginally funnier).###The merely’barely joy comes from Moretz’s droll, withering line readings (“I’ve been social distancing since birth”, “Excuse me, vacuous lemmings”) and a running gag with regards to’concerning’with respect to a couple acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure ting engaged. The rest is a hodgepodge of musical interludes (Megan Thee Stallion rubs shoulders with oldies: Pugsley being voodoo-dolled with regards to’concerning’with respect to to House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’; Lurch belting out Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ at a biker bar), random pop-cultural touchstones (a Jaws dolly zoom gag, a Billie Eilish riff), dull slapstick (Fester drops his ‘balls’ while juggling) and colourless voice perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mances, surprisingly from Isaac and Charlize Theron, capturing nothing of Gomez and Morticia’s chemistry and passion.###But the film’s enormous’vast’massive’tremendous gest crime is to spossess’own’nurse off any of the edges that marked out Charles Addams’ original work. There’s a sentimentality at play here that feels utterly at odds with the spirit of the source. Even within its PG framework there could be a sense of the macabre, odd’peculiar ness and irreverence that lies at the dark heart of the first family of frights. Instead, it’s flavourless, kid-approachable’genial animation that could come from anyone. Perhaps Wednesday isn’t the merely’barely one who needs to take a DNA test.