REVIEW: Hotel Transylvania: Transformania Keeps the Series Alive One Last Time
Dracula, Mavis, Johnny, and the rest of the Hotel Transylvania gang are back for one final ride in Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. While they may be missing a key piece to their voice acting team (no Adam Sandler this time), the movie ends the franchise with a bang. In the fourth film, Dracula (voiced by Brian Hull) contemplates retirement and turning the Hotel over to his daughter Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez) and her husband, Johnny (Andy Samberg). The more Dracula ponders the idea of giving his hotel to Johnny, the more he despises it. When the day finally comes for Drac to make the big announcement, he changes his mind and, in true Hotel Transylvania fashion, things go from bad to worse in no time flat.
Unlike the previous three movies, this movie really focused on the bond between Drac and Johnny. Mavis, Eunice (Fran Drescher), and the rest of our monster friends take a backseat as Drac and Johnny explore their father-in-law/son-in-law relationship and they come to find they’re more alike than they originally thought. The animation continues to be just as good, if not better, than the first three films with the animation department really knocking it out of the park with the monsters’ human forms. It’s clear the animation team had a blast creating the monsters’ human looks, especially Griffin’s (voice by David Spade). The concept they came up with for his human character was extremely well done.
Adam Sandler, who originated the voice of Dracula for the first three Hotel Transylvania movies, opted to not return for the fourth and Brian Hull stepped in to help out. Hull’s version of Drac is barely any different than Sandler’s. It was almost halfway through the movie before I remembered Sandler was not voicing the character, which shows how good Hull’s performance is in the movie. Samberg returns as Johnny and is just as great the fourth time around. He has such a distinctive voice it is hard to not be reminded of some of Samberg’s other roles, namely his role as Jake on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Gomez returns as Mavis and there just wasn’t enough of her character in the movie for my liking. She was such a major character in the first movie, but as the series progressed her role became smaller. I wish they had given her more scenes, especially scenes between Mavis and Dracula.
Dresher, Spade, Kathryn Hahn (Ericka Van Helsing), Keegan-Michael Key (Murray), and Brad Abrell (Frankenstein) round out the cast, but have minor roles. This movie’s main focus is Dracula and Johnny and does not deter from it for anything. At times it can be a little boring, especially as we watch the other monsters attempt to be human, but overall, it makes sense why the writing team chose to focus on this for their last movie.
If you loved the first three Hotel Transylvania movies, you will have no problem loving this one. It has everything you loved from the first three movies in this one. For those who have never seen a Hotel Transylvania movie, I suggest watching the first three before sitting down for this one. You can watch this as a standalone movie, but it is better when you know who the players are and what their roles are in the series.
Grade: B