Hotel Transylvania

Cast: Adam Sandler, Selina Gomez, Andy Samberg
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky

When I first saw the trailer for this animated flick, I was skeptical. The plot was fun, it was about monsters being afraid of humans. Who wouldn't want to see that? Then again, it was Adam Sandler, a comedian who hasn't exactly delivered the best material recently (see Jack and Jill and That's My Boy--those weren't his best work). Despite of it all, I still saw it, and I have to say, besides the fun plot, the delivery of it all was just messy. Good animation work though; loved the monsters, not so much the main characters.

In order to protect his daughter from humans, Dracula built a castle where monsters like them can take refuge without being bothered by humans. On the weekend of Mavis' 118th birthday, it was all about to change when a human unknowingly enters the castle and falls for Mavis. Since monsters were wary of human presence, Dracula had to do what he can to prevent the monsters from detecting he is a human and at the same time, to keep him and Mavis from falling in love.

The plot itself was fun. I think it was meant to be fun; I would be definitely be interested in seeing something that gives perspective to 'what if monsters were afraid of humans'. It's like the 2013 flick Warm Bodies, where a zombie falls in love with a human. That's fun. I also loved the monsters (except Dracula, ironically). Special mention to the werewolf family; their kids were just the cream of the crop. There was a variety of monsters and they were all brought to life in a fun, not-so-monster-like way. The animation, while it wasn't as amazing as predecessors, it was still good. These though were not enough to save the entire flick from falling apart.

For a movie with a clear synopsis, the movie certainly does not deliver. There was too much going on that it made the sequences patchy. There wasn't much interaction between Jonathan and Mavis's characters, but the story was more focused on Dracula keeping the human a secret. Jonathan was able to insert the fun sequences, but besides from that, he's a one dimensional character. Same goes for Mavis, who barely appears on screen besides her constant whining about not being allowed to go out of the human world. For someone who was a vampire for 118 years, shouldn't she have a clear idea on what the human world was like by talking to their monster family friends? Dracula was an animated character, but Sandler's take on the monster made him dull. The clear lack of direction made the film longer than expected, and it turned out on a bit of the dull side. It seemed like the entire movie was just spinning in circles and aside from the occasional fun scenes, there wasn't much going on.

If this was put against other monster related flicks Paranorman and Frankenweenie, this would lose by a landslide. Hotel Transylvania felt like a run on sentence in which there are too many ideas trying to be compressed in one thought. It would have been better if a defined direction was taken, or there was more of a focus instead of putting everything they wished to say in a matter of minutes. If I were a child, even this movie would be too confusing for me.