Movie Review: “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation”

  Hotel Transylvania is a film-franchise I’ve never really enjoyed a whole lot, which begs the question of why I even bothered to buy a movie-ticket to Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation at all, if I intended to be sour-puss and gripe about it. I wouldn’t say I despise them, rather, I think they go down easier than the average Adam Sandler fare, benefited by the visual gags and zany animation. The issue, really, is I’ve always considered them very light-weight. If Disney (and thereby, Pixar) bolster the best animation in-terms of production-value and storytelling (at least in mainstream United States cinema), next, would be DreamWorks, and then, after that, Warner Bros. Animation, and then, battling for their own spot, Illumination and Sony Pictures Animation would meet. Obviously, Illumination is much more successful, but they’re both cut from the same cloth. They’re films certainly stand taller than animations like Norm of the North or The Nut Job, but they have a certain lack of polish and an approach more attuned to the interests of the younger crowd, whereas other companies like Pixar and so on, feel like their films are accessible to children without feeling abhorrent to adults. The Hotel Transylvania series has always carried a zany but contrived execution, more about providing a basic vehicle for Adam Sandler gang related gags and humor than about a substantial film. They’re casual, they’re junk-food. Be that as it may, I think Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation stands as the best in the series yet.

   Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and written by Tartakovsky and Michael McCullers, following the cast of Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, as well as many others, many who’ve appeared in a lot of Sandler-related films. From a box-office standpoint, the new film is pacing about on-par with the previous installments, and while there’s a definite chance the film might slip behind them, it’s clear with the current numbers the series has maintained an audience and, if Sony’s interested, I don’t see very much stopping them when it comes to making a Hotel Transylvania 4. So long as none of their audience goes out and purchases that godawful-looking Hotel Transylvania video-game released in unison with the film and decides they hate the franchise now.

​   The story-line is straightforward: it has been over a century since Count Dracula has been romantically involved with anyone and over a century since the death of his wife Martha. Oblivious to this, Mavis attributes his behavior to the fact he’s overworked and in need of “family time” and books them on a monster cruise hosted by a woman named Ericka, who (in the trailers as well) is revealed to as a member of the Van Helsing family that wishes to eliminate Dracula.
The reason I went and watched Hotel Transylvania 3 is mostly to do with the fact my fiancée gets a kick out of the series (I guilty pleasure on the order of when I watch a Full Moon Feature film) and I find them agreeably competent. A worry I had and one that might’ve occurred to you has to do with the name and premise of the film itself. The worry I had is that “Summer Vacation” was indicative that the series had run out of ideas and was effectively phoning it in with the subsequent release. I believed this heading into the theater until it dawned on me the series’ storylines have always been very thrown together, especially with the Hotel Transylvania 2 film. As I’ve said, the series does the bare-minimum in-terms of storyline in-order to have a vehicle to entertain children with its colorful décor and silly characters. In this film, I left with the belief it even has a slightly better story dynamic than what was seen in the last couple films. Mind you, the storyline remains riddled with clichés, predictable outcomes, and ham-fisted faux attempts at nuance.

   From my perspective, the most appealing aspects were the fast-paced gags and vibrant animation, and Hotel Transylvania 3’s loose setting gives it the means to stretch its legs some more from what we’d seen in what came before.

   The humor remains very low-brow, focusing more on entertaining the younger crowd, through predictable bodily humor and goofy happenstances. On some level, I factor in the fact Hotel Transylvania’s demographic, however, I am aware of how other animations have been able to walk the line with more grace and more satisfactory results. It isn’t that I expect a film like this to have in-depth relationships or dynamics, but enough competence to get-by without reliance on generic gags and gratuitous toilet-humor.

   Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation fans can rejoice in knowing the film is the best of the series yet. The film isn’t likely to attracted in new viewers for the series or buck off any criticisms everyone’s had about the series, but it remains a soft-hitting, simple affair, propped up by its restricted but exuberant animation.

   In an aside from the actual review, what is the loudest you’ve ever had someone be in a theater? On my end, the accolade is bestowed on a couple of infants brought, for no good reason, to see The Giver on a Friday night. They cried and cried and cried, and listening in, I was even able to hear the Mother trying to sooth them by singing in a jam-packed theater! Eventually, she bit the bullet and left, but it still blows my mind how inconsiderate some people can be. It’d be different if The Giver was a children’s movie and the children can engage themselves in the subject-matter, as opposed to sitting idly by while their mother watches the film. For instance, in a recent outing, this outing, as a matter-of-fact, for Hotel Translyvania, a small boy hollered and hooted excitedly, (and at one point even chucked his large bag of popcorn across the room, spilling it everywhere) at least I could tell that boy was having the time of his life watching the film. The kid was special needs, in case you wondered why his parents didn’t effectively end up right then and there with the popcorn incident. I understand his disturbances might still annoy people (and, honestly, if you pay the price of admission, you have every right to be upset about pterodactyl cries filling the room), but I was able to move on from it. They obviously knew he would cause a scene and were in the back row, unlike the mother with infant’s, who sat smack-dab in the middle. Also, they went on a matinee showing on a weekday, knowing less people would be there and that price of admission is cut-in-half, whereas the woman brought her crying infants in on opening night. I don’t really have an essential lesson to teach with this tangent, but I think reasonability and consideration are more likely to paid back in equal measures. That said, the brief moment where the small boy moved three seats away from his parents and sat on his knees staring at me with a Cheshire cat grin was admittedly unpleasant.