Hotel Transylvania: Transformania Review

It's not a good sign when your lead actor doesn't return to the series. It's not a good sign when that actor happens to be Adam Sandler. And it's not a good sign when it's an animated film! But that's what happened with "Hotel Transylvania: Transformaina," the fourth film in the franchise about Dracula (Brian Hull taking over for the SNL alum), his hotel and his growing family. Even Genndy Tartakovsky, director of the former three entries, declines directorial duties in favor of producer and screenplay credit. Whatever potential turmoil behind the scenes is more interesting than any of the drama onscreen.

Fortunately, this third sequel is about as amusing as the rest (well, I skipped on the second sequel, but I digress). It's manic, colorful, and doesn't overstay its welcome thanks to a zippy eighty seven minute runtime. It doesn't have a point, but with Covid ruling over the world like it's 2020 again, beggars for fresh content can't complain.

The plot this time around involves Drac's retirement, but his plans to hand over the key (literally, a big shiny key) to his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and her human husband Johnny (Andy Samberg) are stalled when he begins to fear that his annoying son-in-law may radically change his monster safe haven. So in order to create a reason for this entry to exist, he makes up a tax law that prohibits creature-person property transfer, to which Johnny responds by turning into a monster via a magic ray gun Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) happens to have (and who happens to live in the basement).

Uh oh, still not enough story for a movie. Drac then tries to return Johnny back into human form, but accidently turns himself into a paunchy, balding bag of mortal flesh. OK OK, we're getting somewhere with something that resembles an actual conflict for a feature film. But egad(!), the crystal powering the metamorphosis hand-cannon cracks, and now it's up to the two male characters to travel to the South American jungle to replace it. And before Mavis finds out! Spoiler alert, she finds out.

Look, this is a kids movie, not a particularly good kids movie, but it's not a bad one either. The script, as basic as it is, isn't overstuffed with a myriad of side stories, focusing instead on a pleasant, if heavy handed, tale about accepting each other, and to my great surprise, there is hardly any generic pop songs plaguing the soundtrack.

I've seen worse excuses for children's entertainment in theaters, ones where I actually paid money to see it, which is probably the best/worst recommendation I have ever given.