What if all those monster movie legends were really not so bad and were actually afraid of us? That’s the basic conceit of Hotel Transylvania, a frantic animation more obsessed with novelty and having its characters running around screaming and hitting each other than providing any substantial laughs or being visually memorable. The animation is nice, sure, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.
Directed by TV animation veteran Genndy Tartakovsky (Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Lab, Samurai Jack), the plot centres on Count Dracula (voiced in pantomime fashion by Adam Sandler) who builds the castle of the title in order to keep his daughter (Selena Gomez) safe from the humans he perceives to be evil. However, on the day of his daughter’s 118th birthday the unthinkable happens – a human (Andy Samberg) finds his way to the hotel and Dracula must then try and disguise the human’s real nature from the other monsters while stopping his daughter from fulfilling her dream of seeing the outside world.
There’s something undoubtedly cute about Hotel Transylvania, bringing an innocent kid-friendly approach to the monsters we’re all familiar with in one way or another; Dracula, The Mummy and Frankenstein (or Frankenstein’s Monster to be technical) are all in there and there’s a measure of fun to be had seeing them interacting with one another, albeit in completely non-threatening fashion. But the movie often awkwardly goes out of its way to point out who a particular monster is supposed to be – the only thing missing are name tags – and never really moves passed its surface novelty.
It possesses a nicely put together voice-cast ranging from Adam Sandler, Kevin James and Andy Samberg to Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi and even CeeLo Green, employing them well instead of it just being an annoying game of working out who’s doing the voices. Though Sandler’s over-the-top Dracula impression in particular verges on the irritating the voices nonetheless work for the most part.
Hotel Transylvania is frivolously diverting and occasionally amusing more than it is flat-out funny, wrapping its hyperactive mentality up in a rather obvious message. It offers nothing substantial to take away from it and is not the type of film that can thrive apart from that. A charming and cute but ultimately throwaway exercise in spookiness for the kids that pales in comparison to the recent, infinitely superior ParaNorman.
[youtube id=”FYgzizpCTKU” width=”600″ height=”350″]
Hotel Transylvania is released in UK cinemas on October 12th.