Hotel Transylvania 3 - A Monster Vacation Movie Review

Hotel Transylvania 3

Hotel Transylvania 3- A Monster Vacation (3D)
U/A; Animation, Comedy, Family
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Cast: Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Genndy Tartakovsky, Mel Brooks, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon
Rating:

Genndy Tartakovsky's "Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation" has all the characters of the earlier two films yet it barely manages to get a giggle or two - for all it's much vaunted hyperactive antics. The plotline is very thin and the jokes bypass the laughter meter by a long shot. Other than the opening sequence, which flashes back to 1897, when Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) was tireless in pursuit of the young and supreme Drac, there's not much-inspired slapstick or cartoony humour on offer here.

Dracula(Adam Sandler) the proprietor of Hotel Transylvania, a haven for monsters, was someone who couldn't ever leave his Monster hotel, but in this one, his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) persuades him to go en family, on a monster vacation cruise into the Bermuda triangle. Overcrowded with indistinct characters and silly, uninteresting and uninspiring mayhem, this animation 3D experience is way too shallow and unexciting for even an 8-year-old to suffer through. Tartakovsky's character design, familiar as it is, keeps the visual interest going for a while, but after a point, it feels like the visual equivalent of gibberish being thrown at you from the screen. Yeah, Even long-widowed Count Dracula, hit by the Zing( Monster equivalent of lovestruck) for a woman committed to destroy him, starts talking in an alien tongue. And it's not funny in the least.

Watch the trailer of Hotel Transylvania 3 - A Monster Vacation

Tartakovsky's character design has a virtual who's who of classic movie monsters invading the screen - Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), Murray the Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Vlad (Mel Brooks) etc. but Van Helsing(Jim Gaffigan), the Vampire hunter is the one who gets top-billing. Licking his wounds and scheming to get one-up on Dracula, he is the bedevilled pivot for the plotline that has the former's grand-daughter, Ericka(Kathryn Hahn) captaining Ship while making feeble unsuccessful attempts at shutting out Dracula. There's pace and momentum to be had here- but the onscreen antics appear jumbled up and largely incoherent.

There's quite a bit of monster ingenuity on show here, though. Sequences with innumerable monsters in dance crowds, carousing on the ship-deck, at the poolside, abound, while the main characters in this series engender a grotesque amiability that could have been mined for much more laughs than this woebegone offering manages. You are unlikely to get into a holiday mood here!

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