Runtime: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Rating: PG
Directors: Genndy Tartakovsky
Quick Impressions:
Let’s begin with a riddle. Ready?
“Why do demons like ghouls so much?”
The answer, of course, is that “demons are a ghoul’s best friend.”
As a girl whose intense obsession with princesses began in junior high when I started reading about the gruesomely fascinating family of Henry VIII, I must say that I wish Hotel Transylvania would have been around when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong. The movie Love at First Bite and re-runs of The Munsters were great, and so was Scooby Doo. After much pleading and whining, I even managed to convince my parents to let me watch The Howling at four and Rosemary’s Baby at six (both edited for television). And I loved getting birthday cards full of monster riddles that began “Hey Birthday Boy” with the word “Girl” scribbled in with marker by my mother. When I was in third grade, I even managed to convince several friends that I was secretly a vampire (or at least give them the impression that if they didn’t play along, I might bite them). I was a little girl who loved monsters, and I know that I was not the only one.
When we were kids, we got mostly low budget cartoons. (Even fairly high-profile cartoons had simple backgrounds. Who doesn’t love “Transylvania 6-5000,” the cartoon where Bugs Bunny keeps changing his overnight host into weird combinations of bat and vampire by saying scrambled incantations like, “Abraca-pocus!” and “Hocus-cadabra!”?)
The previews for Hotel Transylvania have had my family intrigued all summer long. Based on the previews, I expected Hotel Transylvania to be a silly monster movie for kids, full of fun, Halloweeny, old-school-monster atmosphere but with more laughs than scares and no actual horror. I wanted a film with the same fun-loving spirit of “Transylvania 6-5000,” but with 6,5000 times the production value—and I’m happy to report that the movie met my expectations exactly.
The Good:
Usually, I approach Adam Sandler’s movies thinking, “Oh, Adam Sandler, I truly want to love you, but sometimes you make it so very, very hard.”
So I will admit that I was a bit apprehensive to learn that Sandler and some of his pet co-stars were the voice actors in this film. Based on the delightful concept promised by the previews, I still wanted to see Hotel Transylvania, but I was prepared to be horribly disappointed. (Don’t get me wrong. I like Adam Sandler, but his previous animated work is Eight Crazy Nights. No comment necessary. Just sayin’.)
I am pleased to report, however, that Adam Sandler is delightful in this film. He makes a really wonderful Dracula and seems pretty committed to the performance. To be honest, Sandler’s Dracula was a charismatic and sympathetic figure who anchored the whole piece and really made it work.
Andy Samberg is also outstanding as the human fish-out-of-water, Jonathan. (You have no idea how many times I tried and failed to improve on that idiom appropriately.) If you pointedly hate Andy Samberg himself, of course (and it’s really easy—and pretty funny—to imagine him having enemies), then you aren’t going to like the character of Jonathan because there’s no mistaking Samberg’s voice. He makes Johnny just like one of the adolescentish, man-boy kooks he played so often on Saturday Night Live.
Speaking of Saturday Night Live, I was shocked to see that the screenplay was co-written by Robert Smigel. Though I’ve seen many “a cartoon by” him as a long-time SNL viewer, I’m incredibly unfamiliar with his other work. (To be honest, I didn’t know he even had other work, which is pretty naïve of me.) I just think of him as the SNL cartoon guy who often entertained me with stuff like The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The Ex-Presidents. (How fondly I recall the time the ex-presidents had to stop the rampaging Constitution from slaughtering Congress! “The Constitution clearly implies that perjury is both legal and fun!” Who can forget a great line like that?) The other credited co-writer of the screenplay, Peter Baynham apparently wrote Borat (which I hated) and Arthur Christmas (which I loved). Knowing this, I can now say that nobody should complain about Hotel Transylvania’s script. It could have been much, much weirder and way, way cruder. (I am not just complaining about Borat. Much as I love The Ex-Presidents, I have seen some very, very weird Robert Smigel cartoons.)
To be honest, I’ve heard complaints that the script isn’t funny, and I find that to be blatantly untrue. I mean, I would be lying if I said there were no jokes about stinky farts, fly vomit, and dirty diapers, but now you be honest. When I call Hotel Transylvania a movie starring Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg from the writers of Borat and The Ambiguously Gay Duo, don’t you expect much, much worse?
The movie is really not disgusting and gross and obscene. The scatological humor is fangless, the kind of stuff that really appeals to little kids (and let’s be honest, sometimes even to their parents).
I will personally guarantee you (in writing) that everyone who’s ever raised a baby has a really funny anecdote about poop. If you’re not a parent, they’re just not sharing it with you. Also flies are really gross. That’s a scientific fact. And if you’re going to choose a scientific fact to be offended by, for heaven’s sake, don’t make it fly vomit. Dream bigger.
Anyway, Sandler and Samberg don’t use the premise as a vehicle for silly, sketch comedy jokes. They remain in character and help the story progress. The rest of the cast is pretty good, too. Selena Gomez seems perfect for the part of young Mavis, celebrating her 118th birthday and dreaming of life beyond the castle walls.
Steve Buscemi wins the award for easiest celebrity voice to recognize, and Kevin James is surprisingly good as Drac’s best friend Frank.
Funniest Scene:
This is a movie where five-year-old boys laugh out loud quite a lot. (I know because we were sitting next to one.) Adults spend more time smiling than outright guffawing. Still, there are laugh-out-loud moments, but they’re not the same for everybody. This is one of those sporadic pockets of laughter kinds of films.
I personally laughed quite a bit when Dracula gave Johnny his two cents about wooden stakes. I also loved Johnny’s crazy explanation of how he was related to Frank. And every scene of Dracula’s idea of “having fun” features visual and spoken delights aplenty to make you smile. As a parent who has shared a bed with a toddler, I also found it hard not to laugh at the scene of the Wolfman family in bed. And what a wake-up call!
Visually:
Hotel Transylvania is beautiful to look at. The dialogue is perhaps not the most inventive ever written, but if the scenes being acted in the foreground feel a bit by-the-numbers, what’s happening in the animated background—replete with spooky sight gags and thrilling atmosphere—is such strong and captivating work that on some level, the movie is a masterpiece.
In all honesty, I’ve never seen such a good animated monster movie for young children. Every little kid loves the spooky decorations that come with Halloween, but for children, Halloween is about pretending. Little children want costume atmosphere, spooky shadows and plastic fangs without bite.
This may sound silly, but probably my favorite thing about the entire movie was the way Dracula moved and carried himself. His very posture won me over. He just looked so much like how a cartoon Dracula should. Also I recently read Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the first time, so I really loved the way the Draculas walked effortlessly down walls and across ceilings. (Also—off topic, but—how can you say the script isn’t witty when the human’s name is Jonathan, but they never make a big deal about it?)
Probably the strongest visual moment comes as all the guests arrive for Mavis’s big birthday weekend. But my personal favorite image is the way Dracula embraces his daughter, so that his cape surrounds them both. It just looks right, as do the shots of the view of the forested horizon from the castle.
Best Action Sequence:
If you’re seeing the movie in 3D (which we didn’t), the scene with the banquet tables must be exhilarating. It’s fun to look at even in two dimensions.
Personally, though, I really loved the scene when Dracula was leading Jonathan through strange passageways trying to find a secret exit.
Best Scene:
I liked the scene Dracula shared with his daughter on the rooftop, mainly because I found what she said to him so moving. This is definitely a turning point for Dracula, and Mavis has a pretty good line that really hits home.
The Negatives:
I fell in love with this movie from the first scene. It’s not trying to be profound. It’s just trying to be a really fun monster movie for kids, and at that, it succeeds so brilliantly that I see no reason to pick it apart. Do you laugh out loud every single second? No. Are the plot elements or themes original? No. But so what?
As I write this review, I’m watching Road Runner cartoons with my three-year-old (at her request). I could say, of course, “This cartoon is full of slapstick humor. The same plot devices are used over and over again. The dialogue is very lacking. The characters seem shallow with transparent, stock motives. Most laughs come at random moments when an anvil falls on someone’s head.” Taking Hotel Transylvania to task for its artistic “failings” would be a similar exercise. It is meant to entertain children (and, by extension, the child in all of us) by showing us a bunch of silly monsters hanging out in a spooky hotel. It’s a lot more entertaining than just staring at a lawn full of Halloween decorations for ninety minutes, which is the other option for the film’s target audience.
The one thing that did bother me about the movie came in its last act (which is, as a whole, the weakest part of Hotel Transylvania). This whole idea of “zinging” really bugged me. For one thing, the introduction of this concept (far too late in the story) provides far too convenient an excuse for all the monsters to return to Dracula’s side. We’ve never heard anything about “zinging” before, and this all just seems a little hard to believe. Obviously, there’s a rush to wrap things up, and the film handles this clumsily (which is doubly odd since this isn’t one of those movies that has you looking at your watch wondering, “When will this agony end?”) They could have spared a few extra minutes for a more believable monsters-band-together scene.
To be honest, I found the whole concept of “zinging” and the ridiculous emphasis every single monster placed on it to be disturbing. I think it was Fran Drescher’s Eunice Frankenstein who exclaimed in horror, “You only zing once!” or something like that. What a horrible message for little girls (or boys, I suppose)!
I understand that we want a happy ending for the movie, but all the monsters seem to hold the truth Eunice expresses to be self-evident. There’s such frantic urgency, as if to suggest that if the situation with Mavis isn’t resolved immediately, she will be unhappy for the rest of her life. I understand why Mavis feels this way, and even why Dracula feels this way. I mean, strong emotions cloud your judgment. But that’s exactly why it seems so horrible that the other monsters feel that way—because strong emotions cloud your judgment.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the idea of love at first sight, but I do think you should at least blink before signing the marriage license.
Once when my daughter was a little less than a year old, I had a bad fall and hit my head and worried that I was going to die from brain trauma.
(Really I was just extra emotional because I had a concussion.) In horror that my daughter might grow up without knowing her mother, I wrote her a long letter before it was too late. (Luckily, I’m still here, and my daughter already knows that her mother is very melodramatic.) The point is, I’ve thought about what I would say to my daughter, what words I would want to leave her. I thought the revelation of the gift Mavis received from her mother was terribly anticlimactic and really just sad.
Is “zinging” that important? At 118, Mavis has led a sheltered life. Jonathan is the first human boy she’s ever even laid eyes on, and there is a huge difference between chemistry and compatibility. And what about her father? He’s already zinged, and as we know “you only zing once.” And yet there he is, undead forever. Poor old Dracula. That’s got to suck.
People complain incessantly (and far too much) about how Disney princess movies that end in weddings brainwash little girls into looking for a prince charming who will never come. But good grief! You only zing once?! (And they really hammer this home, too. In the final minutes of the movie, they all go on and on about the importance of zinging. It’s even in the closing song, and they’re all on the same page about its importance and everything.)
So what? A little girl in the audience grows up and meets a guy, and they really zing…
And then six months later, he happily shows her all of the bodies buried under the house just as the neighbor’s dog requested. But she still goes through with the wedding because, I mean, you only zing once, right? That’s your only chance at happiness. Otherwise you’re doomed to be alone and miserable.
Sorry to go on and on about that, but it actually really bothered me.
Other than that, I have no complaints about the movie. In fact, I’m excited to see it again.
Overall:
We were going to wait to see this movie until my stepson came back from Disney World, but then it rained and rained, and there was nothing else to do in all that rain…
Anyway, we’re going to have to go again, so he can see it, too, and I for one am delighted about that. It’s the monster movie I always longed for back when I was a five-year-old monster enthusiast. It’s like a birthday card full of monster riddles, projected up onto a massive screen with killer art design and digital surround sound.
Plus Dracula and I have so much in common. We’re both control freaks who go out of our way to please people, but when something threatens our daughters, our reaction is exactly the same.
(I also have that reaction when I accidentally trip over something and when my computer freezes.)
If the packed theater I was in is any indication, the elementary school crowd finds the film hilarious. Some scenes may scare the youngest children but not because of true gruesomeness or horror. I thoroughly enjoyed Hotel Transylvania and look forward to purchasing it on Blu-ray.
Oh, and also, the zombies are awesome!