aliceboy

I rented this solely on the trailer, and on Brody's strength as an actor. While I wasn't disappointed to have seen it, I have to say it came across more than a little heavy-handed. I'll tell it to you now, without spoiling the movie: the message is we're ruining our civilization by not raising our kids properly. So, if you want to sit through an hour and a half of bleakness to be spoon-fed that fairly obvious concept, there are worse ways to do it than to watch this film. It's a solid (if peculiar) cast of mostly character actors, who clearly felt a need to put their muscle behind this story; otherwise, they're strangely placed here. Everyone turns in perfect performances, sometimes in difficult roles (Caan's restrained kindly-but-scary is wonderful to behold), and visually this is a striking work. But beyond the surface, it's a bit thin in character, motivation and plot, so won't end up on anyone's Great Movies list.

When I first heard about this project, I was excited. How could I not be? I've been a monster fan since I was able to be a fan of things, and have enjoyed Genndy Tartakovsky since my very first exposure to his vivid, highly-stylised work. Then came the bad news: the voice cast. Upon seeing that not only Adam Sandler, but also David Spade, Kevin James, Fran Drescher and Selena Gomez were attached, my heart sank. What was this? The worst, most pandering cast they could find? So, I decided I could skip this one, Tartakovsky or not. The film showed at our local theatre, and I let the wife and daughter go with friends and without me. They came back pretty pleased, but not excited enough to make me feel like I'd missed anything. So, I waited for it to come out on home video. Having finally gotten to see it, all my expectations have been confirmed: the film was fantastic to look at, with animation more full of animated life (as opposed to 'real' life, a la most computer-animated films) than I've seen in...maybe ever; the voice cast was awful. It's an entertaining premise (though one I feel has been visited before), and one that has the potential to gather together great monsters in a human-free environment to unwind and show us their 'true' personalities. That much was realised, but only as far as the voice talent could take it. Sandler's Dracula was lackluster and as empty as his performances tend to be. Most of the rest of the cast could have been anyone, really. Even their heaviest hitter talent-wise, Steve Buscemi, was so underplayed as to be non-existent. And Samberg's character, the sole human in the story? Oof. Could they have made him sympathetic to anyone but the most obnoxious late-teen douchebags? And I'm not even going to touch the non-Mothersbaugh soundtrack. Though, to paraphrase the young son of an eminent animation man: movies always end with dancing anymore. Okay, I know that cranky geeks in their 40s are not the target audience for this movie. But maybe it should have been. Clearly, they weren't going to get the Twilight crowd, and the movie was a little too light-hearted for the Twilight-lash-back crowd. Outside of that, who was going to see this movie and actually care what was on the screen in front of them? Monster fans and animation freaks! While neither of those are likely to be completely let down by Hotel Transylvania, I doubt this is one of which any audience is going to need repeat viewings. Except, perhaps, with the sound off.