Movie Review: Hotel Transylvania 2

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Great laughs from the premise

Cons: First quarter slow set up

The Bottom Line:

Grandson a monster?

Movie provides some great laughs

After slow first act

Glad I Booked the Return Visit to Hotel Transylvania

By the time I got around to watching Hotel Transylvania a couple of months ago, I’d already recorded the sequel on TV.  Since I didn’t like the original, a part of me thought about going ahead and deleting it, but I decided to go ahead and watch Hotel Transylvania2, and I’m glad I did.

The movie gets off to a slow start, showing us the wedding of Maris (voiced by Selena Gomez), daughter of Dracula (Adam Sandler) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg), a human.  We then watch as they have their first child, a son.  The question is, is he a human or a monster?  Dracula is doing everything he can to make sure his grandson reaches the full potential of his monster side.

However, the action really picks up just before the child’s fifth birthday.  With a clock ticking to uncover his monster side, Maris is talking about leaving Hotel Transylvania in order to raise her son in California where Jonathan grew up.  She thinks it will be safer for her son.  No one else thinks it is a great idea, and so Dracula thinks up ways to get his grandson to manifest as a monster.  Will they work?

Let’s start with the bad.  The first quarter of the movie is pretty much just set up.  Oh, there are some jokes in there as we see Jonathan’s family and friends dealing with a wedding filled with monsters, but they don’t really go anywhere.  It’s not until we reach the week leading up to the fifth birthday that things begin to get interesting.  This is where the movie should have started all along.

And that’s when the fun really begins.  Naturally, Dracula’s plans don’t go according to, well, plan, which causes lots of laughs.  I got a kick out of the movie at this point.  It was pretty much the exact movie I had hoped the original one would be.  Yes, the film is still aimed more at kids than adults, but it should amuse parents, too.

Even once the jokes start, the story continues to be disjointed with a third act that isn’t set up like it should have been.  However, that’s a minor complaint since it does work well to resolve the story.

The voice actors continue to do a great job bringing their characters to life.  Their work is just as much responsible for the fun as the animation.  Again, the animation is more stylized, but it works for this world where monsters and humans live side by side.

So if you were disappointed by the first, I recommend giving Hotel Transylvania 2 a try.  This is a rare case where they improved things for the sequel.