The simple title of The Addams Family 2 is actually mathematically complicated. Counting only the feature films, this is actually the fifth title based on Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoon family, made famous by the mid-1960s ABC television sitcom. After that show came multiple animated TV series, TV specials, the hit 1991 live-action film (and two sequels), and a successful Broadway musical. Only after all of that did MGM create a new animated film version of the family, released in 2019, presumably having noted the runaway success of Sony Pictures’ Hotel Transylvania franchise. (In addition to three — soon to be four — movies, HT has spawned several video games and a TV series.)

What AF2 does right is to jettison almost all of the “family” history — the iconic house and obligatory suspicious neighbors were dealt with in AF1 — to take the Addamses on the road. The skeletal plot line has Wednesday doubting that she’s a real Addams, eventually leading her to adopt herself into an even stranger family. Meanwhile, the family vacation gimmick (see also: Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation) provides for a series of amusing Addams-worthy skits at sites such as the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. The movie’s best bits are saved for the last half-hour, when the family tangles with a full-on mad scientist in his James-Bond-villain-style lair. It’s an entertaining finale that will thrill kids and amuse adults who recognize all the 1950s (and beyond) B-movie tropes, piled one on top of the other.

But is it, you ask, authentically Addams? To which I respond: Only the single-panel New Yorker cartoons are canonical. Everything else is essentially fan fiction, heading off in as many different directions as there are versions. MGM’s first Addams Family animated feature, with its origin story sensibility, perhaps tried too hard to tread paths well-worn by previous incarnations. But AF2 is its own venture, just riffing on the familiar characters in silly new ways.

The animation is snappy and creative, the colorful designs full of goofy details (pay attention!). The A-list voice cast helps, with Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron as Mom and Pop Addams, Chloë Grace Moretz as Wednesday, and Bette Midler, Snoop Dogg, and Wallace Shawn in scene-stealing smaller roles. Addams purists might quibble with the exaggerated character designs — balloon-like heads and bodies, pencil-thin limbs — but that was a discussion for AF1. If you’re back for the sequel, you’re OK with the Ren & Stimpy genetic modifications. Indeed, genetic modification is what AF2 is all about, in its Frankenstein-inspired fashion, so get used to it. This Addams Family appears to have moved in to stay for a while.

Grade: B-minus. Rated PG. Opens October 1 at the AMC River Hills, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: MGM/Bron Creative)