MONSTER FAMILY
★★★★★
(PG)
ADAPTED from a best-selling novel by David Safier, Monster Family is a joyless computer-animated caper, exhumed from the same ghoulish ground as Hotel Transylvania.
Fantastical creatures of the dark including Dracula, his henchman Renfield and a psychotic pharaoh with the ability to transform into a giant scarab beetle, scuttle through the faltering frames of director Holger Tappe’s Anglo-German pudding, which is drizzled with generous amounts of saccharine sentiment.
A ham-fisted script, co-written by Safier and Catharina Junk, remains faithful to the source material but also introduces a trio of squeaking bats for cutesy, comic effect and to accompany the Prince of Darkness in his occasional musical outbursts.
A brief chorus of the infectious Pharrell Williams track Happy towards the end of the film is the height of soundtrack irony.
Vocal performances from a gifted British cast are forgettable including Emily Watson as a long-suffering matriarch and Catherine Tate as a crazy Russian witch, whose wayward spell-casting sets this whole sorry mess in motion.
Monster Family lumbers like the undead through globe-trotting interludes including a lacklustre showdown at the London Eye observation wheel.
The quality of the animation matches the writing, and the central message about families having more fun when they participate in activities together is hammered home without any attempts at subtlety.
Fittingly, Tappe’s picture will send audiences of all ages to sleep.