Mini-break for your little monsters
If you think the phrase “Adam Sandler comedy” is an oxymoron, then the Hotel Transylvania films might come as a pleasant surprise. Voicing a bubbly, naive Count Dracula, the most irritating man in comedy is not just bearable, but actually rather endearing. The appeal is largely due to the bright and cutesy animation: from a single glance, even the youngest filmgoers will know this is a bloodsucker who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
But when we meet the prince-ofterror-turned-hotelier this time around, he’s missing his usual pep. His daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) thinks he’s tired out from running his hotel for ghouls, while the hotel’s regular guests – including the invisible man (David Spade) and Frankenstein’s monster (Kevin James) – think their widower friend needs to find love, and introduce Drac to online dating.
This results in an unfunny sequence in which the Count faffs about with his phone’s voice-recognition software, before swiping through potential lovers on an app. It’s badly misjudged, ringing false for both the character and the film: Transylvania is meant to be creepy, but Tinder is entirely the wrong kind of creepy.
A cynic might assume the skit exists only to crowbar in its heavy-handed product placement for the production company of Sony’s own smartphones. It wouldn’t be the first time: Sony’s last major animation, the ghastly Emoji Movie, felt like wall-to-wall advertising.
Things pick up once Mavis whisks the characters off on a luxury cruise to Atlantis, where Dracula falls headover-heels for the ship’s captain, Ericka (Kathryn Hahn). Unfortunately, she’s the great-granddaughter of his nemesis, Van Helsing, and actively plotting with the elderly vampirehunter to kill him. Can our heroes find unlikely love by overcoming prejudice and the burdens of family expectation? The answer won’t shock anyone who has seen the first two Hotel films, which tackled exactly the same theme.
The franchise’s cast has now grown to such a size that previous major players (such as Andy Samberg, as Mavis’s husband) are sidelined. Mel Brooks briefly reprises his role as Drac’s dad, Vlad, while fleeting scenes with Wayne the browbeaten werewolf father remind us that the part is tailor-made for Steve Buscemi.
Plentiful throwaway gags hit the franchise’s intended sweet-spot between adorable and icky; el Chupacabra orders a cocktail and gets a goat in a martini glass, while Blobby the blob monster gets seasick and vomits up a sentient blob, which immediately gives him a hug. Aww…
Blobby is voiced by Genndy Tartakovsky, who has directed every film in this franchise. He was previously best known for creating one of Cartoon Network’s oddest and most elegant children’s cartoons: Samurai Jack, a violent Akira Kurosawa pastiche with melancholy nods to Sergio Leone.
The Hotel films don’t share that show’s boldness or edge, but there are flashes of its visual inventiveness here – the cruise liner’s waiters, for instance, are lugubrious whitetuxedoed fish with human feet.
The bright visuals make up for often ropy dialogue; the best jokes are slapstick or sight-gags. Compared with Pixar’s more nuanced take on preternatural family pressure, The Incredibles 2, Hotel Transylvania 3 looks very much like a B-movie, with characters that are easy to like but hard to love.
Still, at just 97 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s a pleasant mini-break that should keep little monsters quiet for a while, and a welcome excuse to hide in the crypt-like cool of your local multiplex’s air-conditioning.