With animated monster movies hitting box offices like nobody’s business, it’s hard to make one stand out, but “Hotel Transylvania” and its non-stop silliness is a good place to start. Even if the plot isn’t anything unique and the character names are widely familiar, the rapid fire little jokes and its timely jab at Twilight is enough to keep someone entertained for the 91-minute film.
The movie follows Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler), the head of Hotel Transylvania, a resort for monsters, as he plans the 118th birthday party for his daughter, Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez). But Dracula, being the over-protective father that he is, refuses to let his daughter leave the castle for fear that she will get hurt by humans. In the eyes of monsters, humans are the evil ones, and will kill a monster with pitchforks and torches at any given opportunity. Humans are seen as so evil that, in fact, not even Count Dracula will suck their blood because it’s “so fatty and you never know where it’s been.”
In the midst of planning Mavis’ big party, a human named Jonathan (voiced by Andy Samberg) stumbles into the hotel after getting lost on a backpacking trip. Dracula notices and has to dress Jonathan up as Jonny-Stein, Frankenstein’s cousin, so he doesn’t scare away the monsters. But Dracula soon realizes something even scarier; his daughter actually starts to like the human. Although it wasn’t hard for viewers to see it coming, Dracula sure didn’t.
The animation of the entire movie itself is a reason to see the movie more than once, even if Dracula’s face is more than twice its normal length. The zombie bellhops looked dead enough to be convincing, but there weren’t creepy enough to scare little kids wanting to see the movie. A younger kid might jump when Dracula’s angry face suddenly comes on screen, but you get used to it after a while.
Many other monsters make an appearance throughout the movie, including Frankenstein (voiced by Kevin James) who is literally falling apart when he isn’t being shipped by snail mail, the Wolfman (voiced by Steve Buscemi) whose lack of family planning results in an uncountable number of hyperactive pups, along with the Invisible Man (voiced by David Spade), Mummy (voiced by CeLo Green), and the Blob.
The plot of the movie, although it is overused, it is a good for a family, especially for a family with little kids. The plot is good at first and the story flows nicely, but about halfway through the viewer starts to realize that the plot isn’t really going anywhere. Toward the end of the movie I think the directors really had to stretch for a plot line because Quasimodo (Isn’t he human? Why is he in a hotel for monsters anyway?) turns into a villain and Jonathan changes his mind about leaving 50 times.
Even though the movie plot never really goes anywhere and the directors were scrambling for a story, the never-ending little jokes made up for it. “Hotel Transylvania” is definitely worth seeing if you want to feel like a little kid again while getting that Halloween vibe.
