“I walked into the showing of Hotel Transylvania a few minutes early. As I was sitting there, I noticed that every person who came walked in was accompanied by someone considerably smaller than them. Now I go to kiddie movies often (though I have been a bit more selective lately) but usually there’s at least a couple of other “”big kids”” there. Then I realized that I was reading The Land of Stories, a children’s book by Glee’s Chris Colfer, and I figured I was in no position to judge myself.
So the premise was kinda thin. Dracula builds a hotel for monsters to shelter his vampire daughter from the supposedly evil humans. A human somehow manages to show up and falls in love with said daughter. Hilarity ensues. Theoretically. Yeah we know, I’m a sucker for blood suckers, so I went ahead and put myself thru this one. It actually wasn’t all that bad. Somewhat enjoyable even.
I do love creatures of the night, and I very much appreciated a lot of the humor poking fun at them. From the odd ratio of laughter volume between me and the rest of the audience at certain points, it seems not everyone shared my sentiment. They cared more for the silly slapstack instead of the smart references. Then again, most of their ages were in the single digits. True, when it comes to munchkin macabre movies, Igor did it much better, but it was still fun.
The film kinda dragged for a while. Again, thin plot, and Adam Sandler can only riff in a Transylvanian accent for so long. But it got its mojo back towards the end. There was this one sequence about acceptance that I just found beautiful. Yes, it involved Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and their merry band of fiends, but I still was affected by it. Boy do I have issues.
So I suppose there’s worse to drag the little ones to. Some things here and there for us perpetual Toys R Us kids. Nowhere near Pixar (not counting this decade) quality, but still enjoyable and fun.
Hotel Transylvania – \m/ \m/ \m/