'Hotel Transylvania 2' - Movie Review

'Hotel Transylvania 2' - Movie Review

'Hotel Transylvania 2'
U; Animation/Comedy
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Cast: Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Andy Samberg
Rating:

'Hotel Transylvania 2' poster. Pic/Santa Banta

The monster comedy is back and somethings at least appear to have changed for the better. It's funnier, cuter but the animation and affect is still less than ensnaring.

Dracula is no longer rigid about his monsters only hotel policy. Human guests are now being allowed in. And Dracula has more teething concerns to worry about. His adorable half-vampire, half-human grandson is not showing any signs to carrying the ‘vampirism' tradition forward.

Dracula's daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) weds her human beau Jonathan (Andy Samberg) and the hotel opens its doors to mere mortals for the first time. Her in-laws (Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman) get pride of place. Mavis' son, Dennis, who Papa Drac likes to call "Denisovich" is not really fitting in to the traditional mode though. When Mavis is busy visiting her human in-laws with Johnny, Drac jumps on the opportunity to enlist his friends Frank, Murray, Wayne and Griffin to put Dennis through a "monster-training" boot camp. But before the successful transition can happen Drac's old school dad Vlad arrives on the scene. Obviously, it's gonna get batty and wild for a while after.

This time out, Adam Sandler co-writes with returning scriptwriter Robert Smigel. So the jokes are a little more fluid in their outpourings and the gags, even though manic, never get to full-blown. The storyline though is dull and anemic in intensity - appears contrived and manufactured instead of free-flowing with ingenuity and inspiration. The CGI animation, though cute and clever, doesn't take the high-end form of a Pixar or Disney. The vocal cast is entertaining enough but the consistency is vapid. There's so much waxing and waning that you just can't hold tight to the good things. The climax is also quite chaotic and repelling-especially since it suggests there's a no 3 on the way... certainly, that's not something we want to go through again?