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Welcome
to the Hotel Transylvania, Dracula's lavish five-stake resort, where
monsters
and their families can live it up, free to be the monsters they are
without
humans to bother them. On one special weekend, a century or so after
his wife’s
death, Dracula (Adam Sandler) has invited some of the world's most
famous
monsters and their spouses: Frankenstein (Kevin James) and his wife
Eunice
(Fran Drescher), Murray the Mummy (Ceelo Green), Griffin the Invisible
Man
(David Spade), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi), his wife Wanda
(Molly
Shannon), and even Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), to celebrate his daughter
the 118th
birthday of his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez). For ‘Drac’, catering to
all of
these legendary monsters is no problem but his world comes crashing
down when a
human named Jonathan (Andy Samberg) stumbles onto the hotel for the
first time
and takes a shine to Mavis.
Director
Genndy Tartakovsky’s creative genius has served Cartoon Network well
with the
likes of Dexter’s Laboratory, and The Powerpuff Girls. A
twenty year veteran of the art, he had received an impressive 12
Primetime Emmy
Award nominations, and had been awarded three Emmys for work on the
series Star
Wars: Clone Wars, and Samurai Jack, also
for Cartoon Network. However, having to contend with Hotel
Transylvania
‘s half-baked, and almost non-existent screenplay (written by Peter
Baynham and
Robert Smigel) would have been quite a challenge, even for a gifted
director such
as Tartakovsky, and it shows! For the most part, there’s just a lot of
dashing and
gliding about the hotel’s hallways as the ensemble voice cast attempt,
albeit
unsuccessfully, to lend some personality to the largely underdeveloped
characters. Instead, they seem to be repeating their gags over and over
again.
The repetitive jokes about the werewolf cubs’ poop are both nauseating,
and in extremely poor taste. Ironically,
the film only begins to show some promising signs of life when the
characters
leave the confines of the hotel, but that hint of something more, such
as a
belated attempt at character development, arrives much too late in the
piece to
be of any value. Additionally, the foray into 3D does not seem to add
much to
the film, making it yet another example of slapping on 3D just for its
own
sake. On a brighter note, Mark
Mothersbaugh’s lively score adds a cool touch to a dull and
uninspired film
experience. There is no denying that Hotel
Transylvania has a great aesthetic
style,
thanks largely to Tartakovsky. Sadly, it ends up being one huge
disappointment.
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