Hotel Transylvania (2012)
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Hotel Transylvania Movie Review
Hotel Transylvania is a 2012 animated comedy film directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and starring Adam Sandler. It’s Sony’s major franchise-starter and a solid film overall.
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“Human blood is so fatty
and you never know where it’s been“
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Dracula is the main character here and he invites all the other monsters to his new hotel. But when a human enters the hotel, he makes him disguise himself as a human and he must now prevent others from finding out and his daughter from falling in love with him.
This is actually a rather solid premise for a cartoon feature that is ripe for laughs and some heart too. Yes, it’s familiar as I’ve seen stuff like this many times before in animation, especially the problematic father-daughter relationship and an overly strict father. But still I liked it here again as it was well written and that human-monster dynamic was also well realized.
Adam Sandler is actually stupendous as Dracula. He’s so amusing in his demeanor and I really liked the character’s look and postures. His relationship with Jonathan is also great as is the one with his daughter. Jonathan is overly like a hippie to my major annoyance as I really dislike that in my animated films, but Mavis is fine and I liked their romance quite a bit. As for the other characters, they’re all okay and fun, but mostly acting like background noise.
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Hotel Transylvania is actually very well animated, though some dislike it, but I find it very pleasing visually. Yes, it’s colorful, but not to a garish degree in my opinion. I definitely found the character designs stupendous, especially of Dracula and Frankenstein. But the highlights here are most definitely the backgrounds. I loved this entire castle and its interiors are truly lovely that I instantly wanted to visit it. The darker palette, when present, is great and I wanted more of it.
Now, the major problem this movie has is the one most Sony Animation flicks have and that is its pacing and action. You can see where I’m going with this, but yes, this movie is frenetic and action-oriented to the point of becoming rather dull in some places. And those places are per usual the second act where the film really lost its footing for me as the action became overly abundant and cartoony with the pace being ridiculously fast and each plot point felt rushed.
But thankfully the first and the third act aren’t like that and those actually feature some fine storytelling and, yes, even some heart. The characterization and voice acting are good, but I found the score off-putting. It’s because this is one of those scores which are overly hip and modern for this type of movie and that really annoyed me as it just doesn’t fit it. Speaking of being out of place, I found the movie’s unwillingness to be even remotely creepy, at least creepy for a child, problematic as the script demanded it.
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But still the dialogue and humor are solid and I really liked the overall plot, setting and the movie’s attention to detail. It’s thus not one of the company’s worst films and it’s actually better than the first ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’, at least in my opinion. It did not deserve a rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes is what I’m trying to say.
Hotel Transylvania is a bit underrated movie critically as it’s not bad at all. Yes, the second act is a mess with its abundant, over-the-top action and a ridiculously frenetic pace, but the rest of the movie is a lot of fun. The story is pretty engaging, the characterization is solid and the humor is pretty good. The highlight is its pleasing animation, especially the interiors and the backgrounds.
