Hotel Transilvânia 4: Transformonstrão

2 out of 5 stars.

The fourth film may be running its course with this beloved series. The film follows Dracula retiring and perhaps leaving the hotel business. And Jonathan trying to fit in with the monsters by turning himself into one and a few others into humans. Sadly, the plot is boring. The script is lazy. The humor is unfunny. Sure kids will love it. Adults may want to take a pass on this one. The animation is eh.

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?

"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.

5/10 - as someone who usually really enjoys the Hotel Transylvania films, I was disappointed in the lack of jokes that landed and the missing spark of fun that I expect from this series.

I didn't like it more than the first, which for me was the best, but much better than the second and third. Likewise, the fact that Adam Sandler did not participate in the film seemed like a very bad decision, it is not the same.