Hotel Transylvania 3

Well everyone, I went and saw “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” released three days ago. Strange how this is released in summer unlike in the past they released these movies around the time of Halloween. However, is the movie still good? Let’s find out:

Nell Minow started her review out by saying, ““You have to be carefully taught,” according to the Rodgers and Hammerstein song in “South Pacific.” Lt. Cable and Nelly Forbush sing ruefully about the prejudices drummed into them as children: “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late/Before you are six or seven or eight/To hate all the people your relatives hate/You’ve got to be carefully taught.”” That same serious theme is nicely mention in the middle of the hilarity and enjoyable scares in this third in the “Hotel Transylvania” movies about Dracula, the loving-to-a-fault vampire dad voiced by Adam Sandler, his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), her really calm human husband, Johnny (Andy Samberg), and their son Dennis (Asher Blinkoff).

In pretty much every other way, it’s basically the same story as the first two, with only a little less smart monster jokes than the first one and a somewhat more interesting storyline than the second one. Basically, Adam Sandler gets to do his two favorite things: speak in a “funny” accent and be lazy, rather in a foreign location (Minow advised, “IRS, check to see if he deducted a cruise as a business expense in developing this one”).

Dracula is still completely in his daughter’s life, worrying a whole lot when you see that it is very difficult to hurt a vampire. To be sure we understand that fact, it is explained to everyone in the movie’s opening flashback, set in 1897, where vampire killer Van Helsing, voiced by Jim Gaffigan, is trying to kill Dracula. Minow noted, “But he is no match for a vampire with nimbleness, courage, and imperviousness to any threat but garlic or a stake through the heart. The original story’s third weapon against vampires, a crucifix, is omitted in favor of cartoon secularism, as is the ickiness of subsisting on blood, the inconvenience of sleeping in sunlight, or the problem of marriage between someone with a human life span and someone who never ages. Any concerns about those issues are for Twihards.”

These are nice and fun monsters, including the Invisible Man and his girlfriend (David Spade and Chrissy Teigen), Frankenstein’s Monster and his bride (Kevin James and Fran Drescher), Murray the Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), Mr. and Mrs. Wolfman (Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon), with their dozens of wolf-babies, including their daughter Winnie (Adam Sandler’s daughter, Sadie Sandler), Blobby (Genndy Tartakvosky) and Dracula’s father, Vlad (Mel Brooks). There’s nothing really scary about them and they want to spend their whole time having out with each other, first at the hotel that gives the series its title and then at Mavis’ surprise vacation – a cruise ship with all the services. As Dracula says out loud, that means it’s just his hotel except on a boat. However, there’s one other big difference. He’s not the boss, which is both worry and little load off. “You need a vacation from managing everyone else’s vacation,” Mavis tells him. This is actually the time for them to have some family time together.

Dracula says that the cruise, sailing for the Bermuda Triangle and the lost city of Atlantis “is not the Love Boat.” However, he starts to think he might want to find love (the vampire word “zing” for love at first sight), many years since his wife died. He even tries to find someone he’d like to swipe right on in the monster app Zinger, which is their version of Tinder. Then, he sees the beautiful human ship’s captain, Erika, voiced by Kathryn Hahn, and ZING.

There are some “monsters have to be monsters” lines – “We’re here, we’re hairy, and it’s out right to be scary!” However, they’re not scary in the end and as in the other films it is the humans and their refusal to look beyond the scary exteriors to see that just like humans; monsters love their families and don’t want to hurt anyone. Minow said, “There’s a lot of silly stuff, a cute dance number, some appealing if uninspired pop song selections (Bruno Mars, the Beach Boys, the ubiquitous Mr. Blue Sky), plus the one song no one can resist dancing to (I won’t spoil it, but the audience groans suggested no one was surprised). It turns out music does have charms to sooth the savage beast after all.” This movie has enough in it to calm kids on summer vacation for 90 or more minutes.

Minow noted, “Parents should know that this movie has some schoolyard language, potty humor, peril and violence (including attempted murder of monsters and a character who is badly injured and ultimately almost entirely prosthetic).”

Now, in all honesty, this may or may not be as good as the first two, but I think it’s a fine, enjoyable animated family film. If you liked the first two films, you should be able to enjoy this one. I personally had some really laugh out loud moments in this film and found myself having an enjoyable time here. I would give this a recommendation and say check this one out. You should be able to enjoy this one. If anyone has kids, bring them along.

Alright everyone, thanks for joining in on today’s review, stay tuned next Friday for the continuation of “Clint Eastwood Western Month.”