Hotel Transylvania (2012) Review by Shivom Oza – A Pleasant Monster Film!

3/5 Stars

A humorous take on the ‘Monsters v/s Humans’ saga, the film, ‘Hotel Transylvania’, is about a whimsical, harmless Dracula, who wants to protect his daughter from the ‘dangerous’ human world.

With spectacular animation, some great dialogues and several hilarious sequences, ‘Hotel Transylvania’ will turn out to be a riot with the kids. The screenplay is found wanting, in the sense that the main conflict isn’t convincing enough. However, it is a nice watch and will definitely keep you entertained.

Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler), who is weary of anything and everything to do with humans, builds this hotel, which houses monsters and protects them from the dangerous human civilization. His hatred for that kind goes back to the time when his wife was forced to kill herself owing to the protests by the humans.

He has a daughter Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez), whom he has kept confined in the Hotel for 118 years. Mavis is an inquisitive person and is keen to venture into the outside world, but her father always prevents her from doing so.

On the occasion of her 118th birthday party, which is attended by the who’s who of the monster world including Frankenstein, Murray the Mummy, Wayne and Wanda Werewolf, Griffin the Invisible Man among others, a human, 21 year old Jonathan (voiced by Andy Samberg) is the gate crasher at this exclusive monster hotel.

The problem arises when the Dracula realizes that Jonathan is getting closer to Mavis (who doesn’t realize that the boy is a human). He tries to keep Jonathan away from the monsters at the party and this comedy-of-errors leads to a lot of untoward, yet rib-tickling, incidents.

The film has plenty of delightful moments, thanks to the humorous dialogues and some rip-roaring sequences in the screenplay. Even the voiceovers, especially those of Adam Sandler, Gomez and Samberg, are wonderfully done. The lovely visuals, with a fairly decent augmentation thanks to 3D, are one of the better ones, among the animated films of 2012. One of the better moments of the film features the self-deprecating jokes by the monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula and Invisible Man end up being the butt of most jokes, and such lovely moments will definitely be relished by the younger audiences. Even the scenes in which Jonathan belts out contemporary music pieces and the old-fashioned monsters have a scandalous look on their faces are quite amusing.

The only problem with the film is that its conflict isn’t convincing enough. There is no real antagonist in the film. This aspect does diminish the engagement-level to some extent. Director Genndy Tartakovsky pulls off a fine animated film. The concept is quite unique and even the execution is very impressive.

The fun film will definitely work with the kids. The human-monster camaraderie and the monster-monster interactions are bound to keep the adults entertained as well.

Shivom Oza