Hotel Transylvania: Transformanía

I really liked the three Hotel Transylvania films, with the third one being my favorite, and I was really looking forward to this one, but..

Wow..

90% of the jokes are just slapstick (and a pretty mean-spirited one at that), and only seven characters get transformed into humans or monsters, even though this is supposed to be the biggest selling point of the film; just seems like a missed opportunity, really.

The whole conflict between Drac and Johnny just feels recycled too, like, haven't we already gone through this with the first and second films? This feels like an unused idea for the second movie that was wisely shelved but was now brought back for.. what exactly?

Even without Adam Sandler, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania still works. Since this is the fourth installment of this franchise, the jokes are a little tired and the story isn't as strong, but the movie still managed to get a few chuckles out of me, and the animation is enjoyable. Hotel Transylvania isn't a great animated film series, but at least it's consistent.

"Hotel Transylvania: Tranformia" is an incredibly lazy film about to be released on Amazon Prime. I say incredibly lazy because the plot is essentially the previous movies! For example, in the original "Hotel Transylvania", the vampire father has trouble accepting his incredibly annoying human son-in-law to be. Here in the fourth film, the son-in-law is married to Drac's daughter...and dad is STILL having trouble accepting him. The story seems to say it's because of the father's prejudices, but to me it seemed more because the son-in-law was incredibly annoying and addle-brained.

So what did I like about this film? Well, the animation is nice. Other than that, the story seems to scream 'made to be aired directly on DVD or a channel like Netflix or Amazon Prime". Younger kids will likely enjoy it...and parents watching should probably have some knitting or a laptop handy as the film will bore them if they've seen the previous films, as the story has nothing in the way of innovation or originality.

Hotel Transylvania (2012): A really funny movie that has great voice acting, a funny story, and nice animation.

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015): A really funny sequel to the first with new elements and still great animation, along with the same great voice acting.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018): I know this entry in the series was a little strange, but I still liked it and thought it was really entertaining.

I thought Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022) was just ok, but that is mostly because it's the 4th and final entry in the series. It isn't fantastic but it is entertaining.

The voice acting is still really good, especially when you have Brian Hull voicing Dracula instead of Adam Sandler. Brian Hull's voice for Dracula sounded really similar to Adam Sandler's voice, so I couldn't tell the difference.

The animation has greatly improved since the 1st movie in 2010 and it's pretty funny, but does have stupid moments like the 3rd movie. Which I thought was funny but can be random at times.

I like the plot and I still really like the characters. I liked Dracula's human form and how he has to deal with human problems. It was funny to see, along with Johnny being a monster and liking all the things monsters can do.

I think you should check this out if you liked the previous 3 movies. I thought it was a ok entry to the series but entertaining, also its a good ending for the series to leave off.

When Adam Sandler left the cast, he took the whole spirit of the project with him.

You may not like Sandler personally, I don't know, but he had the spirit of the Hotel Transilvania series in his voice.