HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is the delightful sequel to the charming 2012 kids animated movie.  It brings together most of the creative and voice team of the original for a story that feels organic in its progression.  In the first film, Dracula (Adam Sandler) struggled to accept that his beloved daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) had fallen in love with a human interloper (Andy Samberg) in his monster hotel.  In the sequel, the kids have gotten married and Drac is a grandpa to cute little Dennis. Problem is, Dennis doesn't appear to be a monster at all.  And so, a concerned Mavis wants to take him to live in the human world, much to Drac and his son-in-law's horror.

For much of the movie we see Drac take the kid on a road-trip to discover his inner monster, with laughably negligible impact. Turns out the monsters aren't really that monstrous anymore, partly through old age, and just plain old assimilation.  Pretty soon, Drac comes to believe that Mavis is right.  But at a last hurrah birthday party for Dennis, Drac's father Vlad (a brilliant cameo by Mel Brooks) comes to town. This infamously hard-ball monster is aghast that his son-in-law is human, just as the human grandparents are happy the kid is "normal".  

There's lots of social commentary in here about the difficulty of being accepted as a mixed-race or non-straight kid.  The difference between tolerating something and truly accepting it.  The difficulty of being understood by both sides and the pressure to please parents and grandparents.  And that's to be applauded. But aside from all that, the movie really works at the level of great animation, and superb imaginative comedy. The scenes of vampire bat flight are beautifully animated, and there are some lovely throw-away visual jokes (such as Drac giving the Invisible Man a purple nurple). Finally, what I love in this movie, as in the original, is its heart.  This is just a straightforwardly joyously warm-hearted movie that makes you want to hug your family and embrace glorious diversity.  Kudos to all involved.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2 has a running time of 89 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie is on global release.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is, like PARANORMAN, an absolutely lovely, beautifully drawn, heart-warming children's animation film that pays homage to horror film history.  Adam Sandler plays Count Dracula, so scarred my the peasant mob killing his beloved wife, that he turns his castle into a hotel for ghouls and monsters to protect them from the nasty humans in the outside world. His extreme protection irks his teenage daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and when she meets a stray backpacker called Jonathan (Andy Samberg) the Count is torn between protecting his daughter from the outside world, and protecting the backpacker from the monsters at the hotel.  So ensues some wonderful comedy, with the Count loosening up under Jonathan's influence, and Mavis tentatively entering her first romance.  Ultimately, the movie plays a request for tolerance but it moves us because of its loving rendering of a father-daughter relationship.  As an out and out daddy's girl myself, I fell in love with it.  Kudos to director Genndy Tartakovsky (DEXTER'S LABORATORY) for his gonzo animation style, raucous sense of humour and genuine heart.  This is simply an adorable film.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA played Toronto 2012 and is on release in Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, the USA, Japan, Argentina, Hungary, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ireland and the UK. It opens on October 18th in the Czech Republic, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden; on October 25th in Germany, Kuwait, Ukraine and Spain; on November 2nd in Iceland; on November 8th in Denmark, Italy and Poland; on November 19th in Vietnam; on November 23rd in Finland, Indonesia, Macedonia and Turkey; on December 5th in Thailand, Greece, Singapore and India; on December 19th in Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal; on  January 7th in Hong Kong and Taiwan and on February 13th in France. 

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA has a running time of 91 minutes and is rated PG in the USA.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN - do you find the idea of Adam Sandler catching a fish in his butt-crack funny?

Do you like to see one-joke movies based on two-dimensional SNL characters?

Can you live without a plot so long as you see lots of comedy shagging?

If so, YOU DONT MESS WITH THE ZOHAN is the film for you.

In all seriousness, I almost admire Adam Sandler for the balls-out energy he throws at the screen and his chutzpah in making a gross-out comedy based on the Middle-Eastern conflict. OK - all those humus jokes fall flat, and I really don't find Sandler's character schtupping old age pensioners funny, but you can't deny that this movie means well. It tries so hard to make you laugh, I almost felt bad that I didn't like it more. But I really didn't like it. I hated the Zohan character - a deadly Mossad agent who just wants to be a hairdresser, love his Palestinian girlfriend, and live in peace. I've seen Sandler do the 80s hairdo schtick too many times before, and the accent just rips on Borat. There's nothing intrinsic in Zohan's predicament that requires that he shag older women - Sandler just sticks that in to pad out forty minutes before he can fall in love and protect the neighbourhood from a property developer. Weak. Very weak. And just because it's better than LITTLE NICKY doesn't mean it's good.

Whatever happened to the Adam Sandler who did PUNCH DRUNK LOVE?

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN is on release in Canada, Iceland, Mexico, the US, Australia, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Hungary, Panama, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Turkey and the UK. It opens this weekend in Belgium, Croatia, Colombia, Denmark, Finland and Spain. It opens on August 28th in France, Slovakia and Venezuela. The movie opens in Argentina and Norway on September 19th and in Italy on October 3rd. It is released on Region 1 DVD on October 10th.