In 2012, director Genndy Tartakovsky turned a silly premise into a monster hit. “Hotel Transylvania” was a commercial and critical success, anchored by the charms of megastars Adam Sandler, David Spade, Kevin James, and Selena Gomez, and the unique pleasure of watching them voice a bunch of monsters. Tartakovsky knows a good formula when he sees one. So the sequels simply offered more of the same: more stars, more beasts, more antics, more gallows humor.
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The monster mash allowed a family of ghouls (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Invisible Man) to act like humans and go through the same issues all of us go through from time to time. Self-effacing Dracula learned how to raise a daughter, while Frankenstein learned how to be a better person. However, most of these characters are comic relief, excuses to have gags like The Mummy sweating in a Greek bathhouse. In “Transformania,” the filmmakers double, even triple down on this conceit, to reliably wacky results.
The film opens with the pals back at the hotel, celebrating the castle’s 125th anniversary. It’s a sharp opening, especially since it establishes all the main characters for newcomers, so parents don’t have to google “who’s the invisible guy in ‘Hotel Transylvania?'” for their kids. Dracula (Brian Hull, in for Sandler) has plans to hand over the keys to his daughter, Mavis (Gomez), and her husband, Johnny (Andy Samberg), but has second thoughts when Johnny starts talking about the renovations he’d like to make. Put on the spot; he comes up with a real-estate law that prevents humans from owning castles. Johnny, thinking it’s his fault he’s not a monster, asks Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) to help him change, and voila, he’s a green dragon with teeth the size of spears.
There’s just one problem. Well, more than one, actually. Through a series of minor missteps, Dracula and his “Drac Pack,” including The Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), Frankenstein (Brad Abrell), and The Invisible Man (Spade), are transformed into humans as well. Whoops! Now Drac and Johnny are off to find some gem in South America that will revert everyone back to their usual selves, hopefully before Mavis finds out what’s happened. Like the previous installments, the adventure gives children all sorts of stuff to look at, like a forest where Dracula is attacked by mosquitoes or a cave where waterfalls flow into theme park rides. Some may notice a lack of coherence in these scenes, but “Transylvania” has always been more about slapstick than story. The fourth time around, there’s even less story, with Dracula going through all the pratfalls of being human (heat! sores! bruises!).
The pleasures of “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” are both visual and script-based, as they revolve around the writers’ ability to come up with more fish-out-of-water material. Dracula’s dad probs are still downright hilarious, and the story offers the characters a few opportunities to body swap, showing off the animator’s ability to create different monster-human archetypes. Once again, this is a one-joke movie, but for the time being, that joke still has a little bit of bite in its fangs (relatively speaking, of course), especially with such charming voices and clever gags. It’s not likely we’ll see another one of these things, but if you ask me, another stay at Transylvania wouldn’t be so bad. [B-]