Movie Review: Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation ** / *****

Directed by: Genndy Tartakovsky.

Written by: Michael McCullers & Genndy Tartakovsky based on character created by Todd Durham.

Starring: Adam Sandler (Dracula), Andy Samberg (Johnny), David Spade (Griffin), Selena Gomez (Mavis), Kathryn Hahn (Ericka Van Helsing), Steve Buscemi (Wayne), Mel Brooks (Vlad), Fran Drescher (Eunice), Keegan-Michael Key (Murray), Kevin James (Frank), Molly Shannon (Wanda), Chris Parnell (Stan the Fishman), Chrissy Teigen (Crystal), Joe Jonas (The Kraken), Genndy Tartakovsky (Blobby / Baby Blobby), Joe Whyte (Puppy), Aaron LaPlante (Captain Gremlin / Gremlin Stewardess).

 

It’s hard to hate the Hotel Transylvania movies – they are kind of dull, but innocuous with enough in them to keep them from being painful to sit through, but not really enough to keep you fully engaged. They are designed for kids to enjoy – and for there to be just enough in them for their parents that the sit is not painful to endure. The third film in this franchise is now out, and it kind of feels like the filmmakers didn’t really have a plot for this one, so they kind of threw one together on the fly. The background detail and character design is the best thing about this movie – it’s true of the other movies in the series as well – but this time out it was only the throwaway details that really worked for me at all.

 

The third film in the franchise finds Dracula (Adam Sandler) lonely and overworked running his hotel for monsters. His daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez) decides that what her dad needs is a vacation – so she books him, and all the other popular characters in the series, on a monster cruise. After the best extended sequence in the movie (by a long shot) – a flight on “Gremlins Airways” – where the entire crew is made up of those little guys from the classic Twilight Zone episode – everyone arrives on the cruise ship – not know the whole thing is an elaborate trap set by Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) and his great granddaughter, Erica (Kathryn Hahn). Complicating things is that Dracula “zings” on Erica – meaning he falls in love with her at first sight.

 

The biggest problem with Hotel Transylvania 3 is that this has always been a series that is better around the edges than it is at its main plot – and this time, the main plot pretty much takes up the entire narrative. There really is no reason for any of the characters who aren’t Dracula to be on the cruise – other than they are popular, and it is a cruise ship so they need a lot of monsters around – but we really go through long stretches where we don’t see the other characters (two of them literally get locked in a closet for almost the entire film). The film is still at its best around the edges – other than the Gremlins flying the plane, my favorite moment was a complete throwaway involving the Chupacabra that is over in about five seconds.

 

It is clear that the filmmakers – including director Genndy Tartakovsky – have a genuine love for the old monster movies, and enjoy bringing them to animated life. The characters look great here – as they always have. What’s lacking is really any reason to care about what’s happening in the film. It’s such a dull story that the film doesn’t even provide much in the way of set pieces to add some visual excitement – something beyond the design of the characters and the backdrop to be interesting.

 

The film will likely remain popular with its demographic – my 6 and 4 year olds had a fine time at the movie. And, like the previous installments, the time passes pleasantly enough as you watch. There’s just not as much here as there was in the previous two films – and even those felt flimsy.

Movie Review: Hotel Transylvania 2

Hotel Transylvania 2
Directed by: Genndy Tartakovsky.
Written by: Robert Smigel & Adam Sandler.
Starring: Adam Sandler (Dracula), Andy Samberg (Jonathan), Selena Gomez (Mavis), Kevin James (Frankenstein), Steve Buscemi (Wayne), David Spade (Griffin), Keegan-Michael Key (Murray), Asher Blinkoff (Dennis), Sadie Sandler (Winnie), Fran Drescher (Eunice), Molly Shannon (Wanda), Megan Mullally (Grandma Linda), Nick Offerman (Grandpa Mike), Dana Carvey (Dana), Rob Riggle (Bela), Mel Brooks (Vlad), Jonny Solomon  (Blobby), Chris Kattan (Kakie).

The knock on Adam Sandler for a while now is basically that he’s lazy – that he churns out basically the same thing time after time, and most of the time he doesn’t even appear like he’s trying. Hotel Transylvania 2 will hardly change people’s mind on that – it is very similar to the first film, and in fact similar to Grown Ups as well – as Sandler assembles his buddies (in this case Kevin James, Steve Buscemi and David Spade among others) and although they are monsters, they are basically bored suburban dads who have been tamed by years of marriage and child rearing, who just want a little chance to break free. Because this is an animated film aimed at children, it also includes a message about inclusion – and accepting who you are, and not trying to force others to be something they are not. All pretty standard stuff for an animated film – and executed well enough that my 4 year old daughter seemed to enjoy the 90 minute runtime well enough (even if she grew a little restless once we were out of popcorn). Hotel Transylvania 2 was made because the first film made money – and even if no one particularly liked it, that means a sequel was necessary – and no one seems to particularly like this one either, but it hit that box office sweet spot – long enough after Minions that parents are looking for something to take their kids to, and yet far enough before Peanuts or The Good Dinosaur that they may not want to wait for them. Watching the film is hardly a painful experience – it moves quickly, has a few moderately funny jokes, and isn’t as headache inducing as many animated films that assault the viewing with a non-stop barrage of color and action. But that’s hardly a recommendation, is it?

Last time you might recall that Dracula (Sandler) was raising his daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez) by himself at his monster only hotel, when a human, Jonathan (Andy Sandberg) inexplicably found the place – and Mavis and he ended up falling in love, much to Dracula’s chagrin, although eventually he came to terms with it. The plot of the second movie is that Mavis’ son Dennis is approaching his fifth birthday – and if his vampire fangs don’t come by then, they won’t come in at all – a real risk because he’s half human (apparently this is a world not unlike the Muppets, where in A Muppet Christmas Carol all of Kermit and Piggy’s boy kids were frogs, and all the girls were pigs – Dennis will either be a human or a vampire, not half and half, like Blade). Mavis thinks that Dennis may be better off being raised near Jonathan’s parents – in Santa Cruz – rather than Transylvania, if he is human that is. So Dracula conspires with Jonathan – who doesn’t want to leave – to get Mavis out of the way for a little while, so he and his buddies can find ways to bring out Dennis’ inner monster, one way or another.

Part of the problem with Hotel Transylvania 2 is that many of the jokes are essentially the same as the first film – where the idea was that it would hilarious to see all these monsters as just regular guys (and other than Selena Gomez, they’re all guys – and Gomez is stuck in the same role women in Sandler movies always seem to get stuck with – that is to be the stick-in-the-mud that ruins the guys fun). There are moments that work – I’m still a sucker for Steve Buscemi, and like his vocal work as a werewolf with hundreds of kids, who seems completely miserable, all the time). But those moments are too few and far between – as we spend too much time on too many uninspired and repeated gags that don’t much work, before ending with an action sequence that seems out of place with the rest of the film.

For its target audience, Hotel Transylvania 2 gets the job done – but not much else. When my daughter and I left some other movies, she cannot stop talking about them – when we left this one and I asked if she liked it, she said yes, and that was about it. She had fun watching the movie – but then again, 4 years olds seem to have fun watching just about anything animated (unless it involves a witch, which is the only thing my daughter seems to be afraid of – none of the monsters here seemed to scare her). The film is what it is – a fairly lazy and generic, but not completely painful animated kid’s movie – a way to bridge the gap between the animated hits of the summer, and the (hopefully superior) animated hits of American Thanksgiving/Christmas.