Hotel Transylvania
Release year: 2012
My Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Tagline: Where monsters go to get away from it all.
Synopsis: Welcome to Hotel Transylvania, Dracula’s lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up and no humans are allowed. One special weekend, Dracula has invited all his best friends to celebrate his beloved daughter Mavis’s 118th birthday. For Dracula catering to all of these legendary monsters is no problem but the party really starts when one ordinary guy stumbles into the hotel and changes everything!
We have reached Adam Sandler's first animated movie. Yes. Not a single other one before this.
Okay, so maybe this isn't Sandler's first animated movie, but it his first animated movie for kids. And overall, I think this one succeeds way more as an animated movie than Eight Crazy Nights did and more as a kids movie than Bedtime Stories did. It's fun, it's pretty funny, and Sandler gives a really good performance here.
Sandler is having a great time as Dracula. He's totally leaning into every Dracula voice you've ever heard, but he also has his own spin on it that is uniquely Sandler and makes it probably the voice you'd want exactly for the character. I just think his brand of silliness works so well for kids movies which is why Bedtime Stories was so disappointing. I don't want him to be the straight man. I want him to be a part of the zany. And he really does have so much fun in Hotel Transylvania. There are just so many lines that his delivery is what makes it funny. One of the best Sandler performances and one of his best voices too, even if Whitey gives it a run for it's money.
I also like how despite it not being an Adam Sandler created movie, his whole crew is here to back him up and give really fun performances. We've got Steve Buscemi, Kevin James, David Spade, and Andy Samberg, who is quickly becoming more common in Sandler movies. I particularly like Andy Samberg here who plays the human that falls in love with Dracula's daughter. I think after watching Brookyln 99 I really began to appreciate Samberg's style of humor and character's he tends to play. He's usually just a major lovable doofus like he is in Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and I think he does that role better than anyone I know. And he is probably the funniest part of the movie. I love just how along for the ride he is and so stupid but so kind hearted. Delightful.
Tangent, but with this whole crazy cast of monsters at the hotel, why is Quasimodo one of them? Like that's super messed up to make a human with deformities one of these scary monsters. SMH.
It makes sense for Hotel Transylvania to be pretty good. It's directed by the creator of Samurai Jack and Dexter's Laboratory- two incredible cartoons. I think I have begun see just how well cartoon creators particularly from the 90s and 00s do when they can bring their humor and artistic expertise to a movie format. I recently watched the Angry Birds Movie 2 directed by the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and had such a delightful time. I don't even like that show! Apparently there's a Angry Birds Movie 3 coming out soon also directed by him so I am incredibly excited.
I think I liked this movie more than when I did when I was a kid. I remember convincing my dad to go see it when he tends to not really like comedies or kids movies, and of course he didn't like it. So I just sat there the whole movie just hoping it would be good so he would let me pick movies in the future. I remember cringing so hard at the "Zing" song at the end especially when Dracula starts rapping. Yeah my dad didn't let me pick movies for a little while after that, but he didn't really have a leg to stand on after he took us to see the 2018 Robin Hood. Now that is a movie worth a review on here someday!
So while I enjoyed it more than I did when I was a kid, it's not like it's incredible or anything. It's just a pretty good movie with some fun and some cringe. But the good definitely outweighs the cringe, and that alone make me put this in the upper half of Sandler movies.
But I can't rank it too highly because they missed the chance to play "The Monster" by Eminem ft. Rihanna in the credits, and I can't forgive them for that. I'm friends with the monster.
