Thursday, October 1, 2015

Hotel Transylvania (2012)

Today is the first day of October! I celebrated by eating the first pumpkin muffin of the season. Today we are watching Hotel Transylvania, which until the constant ads for Hotel Transylvania 2, I honestly didn't know existed. But we need to watch the first one in order to appreciate the second.

This film is very family friendly. It is especially good if you have already seen any classic horror films with your children. The monsters are all voiced by top billing comedians such as Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Molly Shannon and many others. There are so many stars in this film. The monsters are Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, Werewolf man, and The Mummy. There are many others in bit parts that add to the fun.


Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) builds a hotel as a monster's safe haven from scary humans. He does this by request of his late wife in order to protect their daughter, Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez). Fast forward to her 118th birthday (which is 18 in monster years apparently) and Mavis is itching to see the world beyond the hotel. Dracula goes to great lengths to prevent this, until a human stumbles onto the hotel.


Obviously it's love at first sight for Mavis and the human, Johnathon, who Dracula quickly disguises as a monster.  Dracula is unable to hypnotize Johnathon into forgetting about the hotel and Mavis and leaving, because he is wearing contacts.  However, Dracula has no problem hypnotizing the airline pilots through a thick glass windshield.   Mavis is most intrigued by Johnathon's lifestyle as an adventurous backpacker, which is the polar opposite of her.  Dracula forces him to leave, but later teams up with the rest of the monsters to get him back.  

There are a lot of one-liners and lots of visual action, which is great for kids.  It may not be a princess movie, but with so much going on, they won't even care.  I will give this film a 7/10.

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