Hotel Transylvania 2 – 3 out of 5
I saw the first film on a whim while spending Halloween with
my niece and nephew when it came out in the theaters in 2012 and found it to be
surprisingly fun. I didn’t think it
would end up getting a sequel but, like all animated features, it got its
second film last year. I watched the
trailer and thought that it looked like it could be enjoyable. So, did I enjoy Hotel Transylvania 2 as much as
the first one? Well, if you checked the
link to the first one and compared the scores I gave that one to this one, you
already know your answer…but you can read on anyway.
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It's a little weird that they chose this way to tell Dracula they were pregnant. |
Okay, so Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg),
after having their ordeal in the first film and falling in love, have gotten
married and announced to Mavis’ father, Dracula (Adam Sandler), that they are
going to have a baby. After their
child—Dennis (voiced by Asher Blinkoff)—is born, Dracula becomes preoccupied
with whether or not he’s going to be a monster or a human. However, Mavis is too much of an
overprotective parent for Drac to test him so, when he and Jonathan come up
with a plan to get her to visit with her in-laws, he takes his grandson on a
journey with his friends: Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the werewolf (Steve
Buscemi), Griffin the invisible man (David Spade), Murray the mummy
(Keegan-Michael Key—who replaced CeeLo Green in the role) and Blobby the blob
(Jonny Solomon). Dracula hopes this trip
will get Dennis to “pop his fangs”—which actually sounds like slang for doing
dope but whatevs—but his plan could backfire if Mavis finds out or, even worse,
Dracula’s father; Vlad (Mel Brooks), learns that his granddaughter married a human and his great grandson might be a human.
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Okay, I really like the fact that Jonathan's best man is his backpack. |
For the most part, Hotel Transylvania 2 is a mildly
entertaining animated film and a serviceable sequel to a feature that I really
enjoy. Like the previous film, there’s a
large cast all doing their characters very well, there’s some decent gags here
and there, and the animation still looks really good. Even better is the talented Genndy Tartakovsky returning to direct. Is it better than the first one? No, not at all. In fact, in many ways, the film is noticeably
weaker and has the feel of a Direct-to-DVD movie—in the sense that the writing
felt a lot lazier than the first one and it is a major reason why the film has some
flaws.
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One of those flaws wasn't Griffin the invisible man. He was great. |
The only returning writer from the previous film is Robert
Smigel and, for this one, he is joined by Adam Sandler. It might be unfair to put all the blame on
Sandler but one of the biggest problems I had with this film was that a lot of
the jokes are terrible unfunny. Too
often gags are thrown into the film that feel very out-of-place and are more
non sequitur in nature than directly related to the story or characters. Characters will do random things that have no
real context to the events unfolding and these jokes give off a vibe of cheap throwaway
gags. This type of formula is seen often
in Adam Sandler’s live-action comedies where the jokes come not from the scene
itself or the character’s interaction or what is happening to them but, rather, are
completely random nonsense that makes the whole thing feel like the jokes were done
as an afterthought and not as something intentional for the final product. This happens a lot in Hotel Transylvania 2
and it makes me wonder if these jokes were created by Sandler and the stronger
areas and gags of the film—the parts where the humor is pulled from the
circumstances and the character’s defining attributes and mythology—were
created by Robert Smigel. Still, at the
end of the day, the bad jokes in this film aren’t nearly as bad as what you’d
see in something like Grown Ups 2…except maybe the part where Dracula is told
to use Bluetooth and literally calls out for a walking tooth that is blue—that
joke was physically painful to endure.
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Words can't express how bad this joke was. |
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As bad as this film can get, it's still better than trying to sit through the Western Sandler did for Netflix. I tried twice and failed. |
There’s also a ton of lazy development that comes with the
characters and the plot that ends up making this film pale in comparison to the
previous one. For example, Dracula’s
friends, at first, are all for helping him turn Dennis into a monster and
seeing the kid embrace the “old ways” but then will quickly flip and realize
that times have changed and they are not the monsters they once were. Then there’s the problem with talking about
the great grandfather of Vlad at the beginning of the movie and establishing a potential conflict he could create and then not bothering to bringing to bring him in until there's barely a half an hour left in the film. His presence offers up some great conflict
and a potential for Dracula to grow and learn his lesson as a character but
Vlad is simply brought in too late and it makes for some very lazy conflict
resolution. In fact, the movie in
general contains a lot of lazy conflict resolution as even Vlad learns his
lesson in a flash and all the pieces fall into place very quickly and just in
time to do the very predictable and horrible cliché trope of the animated film
world (especially in non-Pixar films):
The pre-credits sequence where all the characters are dancing to a pop
song.
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I think it's just a legal requirement to end animated films this way now. |
At this point, you are probably saying, “Rev., this is a kid’s
movie and your talk about conflict resolution, character development and
hating on a bad Bluetooth humor is pointless because this wasn’t made for you,
it was made for kids and they don’t care if it makes sense or if it’s
dumb.” I won’t disagree with you
there. Kids don’t care if bad writing
rears its ugly head but we live in a time where animated films aren’t just
colorful distractions for kids anymore and they are allowed to have great writing that
brings in well-crafted and deep stories that are filled with dynamic
characters, so having something that is just farted out with bottom of the
barrel jokes that are just thrown in and not grown organically through the
action—especially when the first one had that and proved to be a lot of fun—it
just kinda stinks.
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You know, I won't even bother raising the question of how the undead are creating children in the first place. |
I don’t want to sit here and make it sound like I hated
Hotel Transylvania 2 because that’s not the case. As you can see from my score, I thought the
film was pretty average and overall decent in its entertainment. It definitely felt a whole lot weaker than
the first film but it still has some very solid moments—Griffin the invisible
man, in my opinion, had some of the funniest parts. The animation and the direction from the very
talented Genndy Tartakovsky is also excellent but the film does falter due to
some very sloppy storytelling.
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Blobby also had some great moments in the film. You can't forget to include Blobby. |
Yes! Hotel Trans 2 was an adequate follow up but holy crap was it not as enjoyable. You're right, it is very noticeable in its execution. Also before seeing the credits I guessed Sandler had gotten his hand in the writing because there was potty humor in this! The first had little to none. Ugh,...at least for this series, Sandler should just stick to voicing drac. And yeah,...your right about the pregnant reveal,...a bit awkward and especially since this is a kids (& family) movie.
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