Hotel Transylvania

Reviews from the Dark Side presents
Hotel Transylvania
Released 9/28/12, now in theaters

Adam Sandler, Steve Buscemi, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, David Spade, Molly Shannon, Cee Lo Green, and Jon Lovitz lend their voices to the animated comedy, Hotel Transylvania.  The film is produced Sony Animation.

Count Dracula (Sandler) has retreated from the human eye and opened a swanky, five-star hotel (for his monster buddies, anyway) complete with zombie bellhops, witch maids, shrunken head door ornaments and Quasimodo (Lovitz) as the lead chef.  Drac calls all his pals including Frankenstein's Monster (James) and his wife (Drescher), Murray the Mummy (Green), Wayne and Wanda Werewolf (Buscemi and Shannon) and their litter of cubs, the Invisible Man (Spade), and other assorted ghouls to his daughter, Mavis' (Gomez), milestone 118th birthday party. 

Dracula loves his daughter a great deal and would do anything to protect her which leads to his great distress when Mavis wants to venture outside the hotel walls for the first time and meet humans.  Dracula distrusts humans. So much so, that he orders his zombie bellhops to build a fake human town near the hotel.  He has the zombies themselves pose as angry villagers to discourage Mavis from ever wanting to leave the confines of the hotel again.  It seems like it's mission accomplished until a young traveler named Jonathan stumbles upon Dracula's fake town and follows the zombies back to the hotel.  Drac can't have a human roaming the halls because as the monsters' undisputed leader, he's made all the others as paranoid of man as he is.  To usher him out of the hotel as quickly as possible, Drac disguises Jonathan as a monster to blend in.  He makes up a cover story that "Johnny-stein" is a relative of one of the real monster's body parts.  Things become complicated when Mavis takes a liking to the new monster in town and Drac has to compound the lie by saying Johnny is the birthday planner.  What's a vampire who has sworn off drinking human blood to do?  Does he protect the sanctity of his business or let his beloved daughter find happiness with a human "when there are so many eligible monsters to choose from?"

Hotel Transylvania is light, harmless kid's flick.  It's funny, but I wouldn't say most of the gags are particularly clever, only absurd.  It's kind of like an animated Adam Sandler movie of sorts.  That's not bad if you're a Sandler fan which I am, but I don't know how many adults will like it if they aren't.  The animation is decent if not spectacular.  There are a couple of great belly laughs, particularly when Drac uses his flash hypnosis.  For me, the characters who stole the show are the werewolves.  Poor put upon Wayne, has a gaggle of wild male cubs that do nothing but cause mischief and mayhem.  And he has another one on the way!  The funniest cub is his youngest, a daughter, that seems to be the smartest and toughest among her siblings.

Hotel Transylvania is a good, but not great animated feature that children should like.  I may have reviewed this one differently had I not seen Wreck-It Ralph a day earlier.  They're two totally different movies with different premises, I know.  But, I think children and adults will have more fun with Ralph if parents are choosing between the two.  It's just more clever and eye-popping. But that's not to say that Transylvania doesn't have its fun moments as well.

The Dark Lord of the Sith says:

***1/4 stars

Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Good viewing. Much better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. Could possibly foot the price of a non-Matinee.
5 *= Pure eye candy. Hall of Fame material here.