Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 5

 

Hotel Transylvania

2012

D: Genndy Tartakovsky

**********

Pros: Animation, Some funny jokes, Werewolves look cute, Surprisingly good voice acting from Adam Sandler

Cons: Crude humor, Hackneyed romantic plot, Bad music

      I never found Adam Sandler funny.  I know a lot of people talk about the days when he was “funny,” but they seem to be referring to this.  That, along with its uninspired premise, makes Hotel Transylvania look like a perfectly missable animated film.  I went to see this movie mostly because it was Genndy Tartakovsky’s directorial debut (well, that and the werewolves look cute), and I’m a fan of his.  I don’t like how imitation of his style has made flat, drab animation the norm on TV.  However, he has earned my respect with Clone Wars, Samurai Jack and Symbionic Titan.  Perhaps he will inject some quality into this project.

      The movie’s plot begins with Count Dracula preparing for his daughter Mavis’ (Selena Gomez) 118^th birthday party.  She has lived most of her life in a massive hidden fortress called Hotel Transylvania, which Dracula had designed to protect her after humans killed his wife Martha (Jackie Sandler) and provide a safe haven for all monsters seeking relaxation.  He has promised her that she can venture out into the world on this day, but he is very overprotective and wants her to stay safe in the hotel.  Therefore he stages a fake human attack on Mavis in a fake village which convinces her to stay put.  In addition to the usual guests, Dracula’s friends show up to celebrate the event, and the main cast consists mostly of Sandler’s Happy Madison cronies.  They are Frankenstein (Kevin James), his wife Eunice (Fran Drescher), Murray the mummy (CeeLo Green), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi) and his heavily pregnant wife Wanda (Molly Shannon).  I’m not a very big fan of celebrity voice acting, but Sandler’s is surprisingly good in this movie.  Really surprisingly.  He makes a great Dracula impression and he acts in it as well.  You can kind of tell that it’s Sandler, but it’s good.  In fact, most of the cast is also surprisingly innocuous.  Selena Gomez is a blatant celebrity voice who’s mostly there so that the movie can have bad music, as is CeeLo Green.  Green sings a song so heavily Auto-Tuned that I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not, but his voice is distinctive and fits the character well.  Spade’s Invisible Man has one crude sight gag, but he’s mostly okay.  Frankenstein ends up having the worst fart joke in the movie.  He frames it on Murray while the latter is trying to hit on an attractive female mummy (mummies are a species), producing a large cloud of green gas and effectively cockblocking poor Murray from what might have been his soulmate. 

     The most consistently irritating character is Jonathan (Andy Samberg, whom you know from parody music videos that were funny the first three times you heard the mand annoying ever since), a human who bumbles his way into Dracula’s sanctuary.  Like Mater from Cars, Jonny is a nice guy so it feels bad to hate him, but his slang is pretty grating.  A panicked Dracula dresses him up as a Frankenstein monster to keep him from frightening the guests, but things get complicated when Jonny and Mavis fall in love.  They “zing,” which is what vampires do when they fall in love because we all know “love at first sight” is an immutable law.  He does some nice things for Mavis, like showing her her first sunrise, which is a remarkably bad idea.  Their screen time together is disappointingly low for a movie that revolves around their romance, and their chemistry is lacking.  In fact, most of conflict in this movie is between Dracula and Jonathon as the former tries to get the latter to leave her.  For all Mavis’ involvement in the plot that revolves around her, she might as well be a suitcase with unknown contents.   

      The female characters of this movie seem to get put into the background with little active involvement.  Considering that one of those characters is voiced by Fran Drescher, that may not be such a bad thing.  Still, you’d think we’d at least get more clichéd scenes of Mavis venting her feelings to her girlfriends.  Even Dracula’s male friends get utterly pointless scenes, like when they’re being assholes to zombie versions of classical composers because they want to perform at the party.  This culminates in a a very early 90’s cliché scene in which their supposedly lamer performance is shown up by Jonny’s “cooler” song number.  In the end, Dracula enlists their help to solve the movie’s problem while their wives don’t do anything.  But then again, I suppose I’d rather watch a movie that underrepresents women than have to listen to Fran Drescher’s voice for 90 minutes.*

      Despite this, Hotel Transylvania pretty much throws every annoying romance cliché in the book.  Overprotective parent of female character?  Check.  Someone weaves Web of Lies and eventually gets caught in it?  Check.  Love at first sight?  Justified by magic.  One of the lovers is convinced that the relationship cannot work and therefore reluctantly breaks up with her while holding back tears?  Check.  Someone gets chased down in an airplane?  Checkmate.  The only thing missing is a love triangle.

      When dealing with Jonny, Dracula seems reasonably tolerant for someone who fears humans for having murdered his wife.  You’d think he’d be more vicious, but he mostly treats Jonny as an annoyance until he eventually begins to hit it off with him.  They form a friendship, but then Dracula uses that to finally talking Jonny into leaving Mavis.  Unfortunately, Jonny’s humanity comes to the attention of what passes for an antagonist in this movie.  Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), the hotel’s chef, finds out and tries to kidnap him in order to make him into a dish.  It results in a well-animated but pointless chase scene and Dracula freezes him with his powers.  He eventually overcomes this and publicly reveals the secret at a party where Jonny reluctantly rejects Mavis at Dracula’s behest and leaves the hotel.  Also, Dracula lets slip to her that he staged the village incident, making her angry with him as well.  He later tries to comfort his heartbroken daughter over the breakup when she reveals to him that she and Jonny “zinged.”  It’s established in this scene (which is surprisingly poignant in its execution) that this only happens once between two destined lovers.  She theorizes that Jonny didn’t “zing” back, and that she can never find love.  Dracula, realizing he did the wrong thing, gathers his friends to track Jonny down and bring him back.  Of course this results in chasing down an airplane, what kind of movie do you think this is? 

     Along the way the guys are helped by a group of humans performing a monster-themed parade.  The humans’ acceptance of them makes it apparent that they no longer have to worry about this prejudice any more.  Not because people have just gotten more tolerant of diverse races nowadays, but because they just love the old Universal monster movies and think it’s “cool” when they find out that monsters do exist, which doesn’t make sense.  I mean love Darth Vader as a character, but that doesn’t mean I want him to be real.  Recent fiction may have trained us to see such monsters as groups of people, but doesn’t apply to the character of Dracula, who is consistently depicted as a symbol of evil.  I would have played this for laughs with the combination of Dracula’s characterization of being out of touch with the present.  Dracula doesn’t just have the cultural hurdle of being an archetypal monster, he’s universally maligned as an individual.  I somehow doubt that this movie will change any minds about that.  They arrive at the airport only to find that Jonny’s plane has already taken off.  Dracula decides to risk his life by turning into a bat and chasing the plane down in broad daylight.  I must point out that this movie’s Dracula is the toughest heliophobic vampire I’ve ever seen.  He’s catching up to a jet while trailing and small burning pieces of himself because having Andy Samberg for a son-in-law is apparently worth that.  Dracula takes control of the plane and lands it back in Transylvania.  Jonny and Mavis are reunited and the movie ends happily with a closing credits sequence that features Tartakovsky’s 2D animation style, because the only way people will let you get away with 2D on the big screen nowadays.

      I must say that Tartakovsky adapted to 3D animation superbly.  The animation looks good and has the detail needed in 3D while being stylized, lively and zany.  I particularly like the animation on Dracula, and his body language is part of the things that make him a surprisingly likable character.   Genndy is great at sight gags, comic timing and choreography, which makes HT visually fun to watch for all its flaws.  While I love zanily stylized animation tropes, people tend to mistake them for actual humor too much, which is one of the things that holds Western Animation back.  There are some good jokes scattered here and there, but there are also many crude ones as well as one sadly predictable Twilight dig.  Character designs are good.  Murray looks cool, and I like how the Invisible Man’s glasses change shape to reflect his expressions.  I especially liked the look of the werewolves.  They looked the way I expect werewolves to look, although in a cute art style.  It’s funny that of all the werewolf movies I’ve reviewed so far, this silly fart cartoon is one of the few in which I actually approve of the design.

The werewolf kids look adorable.  I like how their design is reminiscent of the classic wolfman while adding a muzzle.  It also helps that Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon are probably the two most reputable cast members of this movie (Shannon’s presence adds a creepy element if you consider how disturbing her character from NBC’s Hannibal was), and the werewolves get a disproportionate amount of good dialogue.  However, they’re not the best parents.  While Wayne occasionally makes impotent attempts to correct the pups, Wanda allows her extremely naughty children to run rampant throughout the hotel.  I certainly don’t subscribe to Malthusianism, they shouldn’t be trying to make more babies when they clearly can’t control the insane amount of children they already have.  Unfortunately, this results in some of the pups urinating in public, and by the way, movie, thanks for lingering on that shot of an animate sponge gleefully absorbing that yellow puddle for five whole seconds.  That was truly necessary.  One of the funnier moments in the movie is when their daughter Winnie (Sadie Sandler, who also voices young Mavis) uses her sense of smell to tell the guys where Jonny went very specifically.  She turns out to be the most active female character in the movie.

      Hotel Transylvania has plenty of good jokes and animation, but it’s brought down by a poor plot and crude humor.  Genndy deserved a better project than this for his first film, but I’m happy it was successful, since it will probably help his career.  Had it not been, Hollywood would not have learned to stop making stupid cartoons, but instead never give the director another chance.  Fortunately Tartakovsky is slated to make an upcoming Popeye movie, a project which he seems passionate about.  The sneak preview looks promising.  

*Okay, that was immature.  Dissing on Fran Drescher for her voice is unprofessional and John Simon-like.  It didn't help, though, that the entirety of her characters was accusing humans of having loud and annoying voices despite her own.       

QUOTES

[Dracula is walking past shrunken head door signs]

SHRUNKEN HEADS: Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.

WITCH: Good morning, Count.

SHRUNKEN HEAD (LUENELL}: Mae, clean this room.

[The werewolves have exited the taxi at the hotel]

WAYNE: Yeah, it’s a mess back there. [hands zombie busboy money]

WAYNE: Hey, kids, reel it in.  You’re only supposed to make Mom and Dad miserable.

[To Wayne]

DRACULA: You’re family looks beautiful.  Let me just clean up their filth. 

DRACULA: [aside] And Mavis.  If she saw you, she would know that I lied.  No!

JONNY: Who’s Mavis?  Is this her room?  I’m good with a roommate.  I had six brothers growing up, so I can totally share.

DRACULA: [aside] Can’t kill him.  It would set monsters back hundreds of years.

JONNY: One time in Hamburg I roomed with this dude who I caught stealing my shampoo.  I said, “Whoah, man,” and he threw a flower pot at me, but he was cool.

[seeing a female skeleton]

JONNY: Whoah, check that costume out!  Wow, seriously, I just have to ask you, how are you pulling this off?  I mean it looks so real, like I can just put up my hand right [puts hand between her ribs] through…

[female skeleton gasps and slaps him]

MALE SKELETON (ROB RIGGLE): What do you think you’re doing?

JONNY: [realizing that he’s in a room full of monsters] Uhh…she’s-she’s real…you’re real!

JONNY: “I’m Dracula, Blah!  Blah-blah!”

DRACULA: I've never said that in my life. 'Blah, blah-blah.' I don't know where that comes from.

JONNY: Wow, No one ever tried to eat me before, except for that one weird guy at a Slipknot concert.

DRACULA: Listen to me, you are never to return here. Your are to stay away and tell no humans about this place. Or I will track you down, and suck every ounce of blood from you body, until you look like a deflated whoopee cushion!

MR. FLY (CHRIS PARNELL): Wait, I speak Frozen. 

MAVIS: Dad, can you do me a favor?

DRACULA: Yes!  Yes, of course, darling, anything.

MAVIS: Will you erase my mind?

DRACULA: No no no no.  I won’t do that.  There’s too much I want you to remember.

MAVIS: You were right, Dad.  The humans hate us. 

DRACULA: Sweetheart.  There are so many eligible monsters out there.  Y-you’re so young…  What is it?  What are you reading?

[Mavis hands Dracula a booklet reading “True Love – by Mom – For your 118^th birthday”]

MARTHA: Two lonely bats crashed in the night.  They felt a zing.  Love at first sight.  They knew right then they would be husband and wife.  For a zing only happens once in your life.  Your zing will come my love.  Cherish it.  Love, Mommy.”

MAVIS: I thought we zinged, Dad. 

DRACULA: [gasps] You and Jonny?

MAVIS: I…guess it was only me.  But you should be happy, Dad.  There’s no reason for me to leave.  I have no more dreams.  I’m just like you now. 

WAYNE: What’s this minibar charge?

WANDA: Honey, the kids through the minibar out the window.

WAYNE: And that’s our fault?

DRACULA: I need you to help me find Jonny.

WAYNE: The human?!  He could have killed us!

MURRAY: He touched my guitar!

GRIFFIN: He put his hand in my mouth to see if it would disappear. 

WAYNE: Winnie!  Front and center!

[Winnie enters and smells Jonny’s shirt]

WINNIE: He got into a car.  A ’86 Fiat.  It needs a little transmission work, but otherwise okay.  It drove through town to the airport.  Flight 497.  8AM departure. 

DRACULA: That’s in fifteen minutes!

WINNIE: Seat 23A.  He ordered the vegetarian meal.

[The guys’ car is blocked by sheep]

WAYNE: I got this one. [jumps out of the car and eats sheep offscreen while the other watch in shock]  What?  Now there’s no sheep in the road.  Let’s go.