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Hotel Transylvania Review

December 14, 2012

Not even sweet animation can make up for Hotel Transylvania; the weakest of this year's kids horror flicks.

The delay in writing my review of Adam Sandler’s latest endeavour Hotel Transylvania is partly due to my lack of enthusiasm about it. With the brilliant ParaNorman and Frankenweenie already this year, director Genndy Tartakovsky was really up against it in his cinematic debut. Sadly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Hotel Transylvania just didn’t live up to the high standards set by its animation peers this year.

Hotel Transylvania is Dracula’s (Sandler) lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can be themselves without the concern of humans getting in the way. Some of the world’s most famous monsters (including Frankenstein’s, the mummy and the Invisible Man) gather to celebrate his daughter Mavis’ (Selena Gomez) 118th birthday. Everything goes swimmingly, that is until Jonathan (Andy Samberg), a human, stumbles across the hotel and falls in love with Drac’s daughter.

There’s no doubt that children across the land will find delight in Hotel Transylvania’s silliness, but it leaves adults much less amused. Tartakovsky’s animation is delightful with many of the monsters appearing much cuter than their folklore leads us to believe they are; this still isn’t enough to win me over. Unlike it’s Disney competitors, the plot and scripts lacks the imagination and quick wittedness to sustain even the most patient of adult audience members.