Featuring The Voices Of: Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan Michael Key, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Nick Offerman, Dana Carvey, Rob Riggle, Mel Brooks, Megan Mullally
Directed By: Genndy Tartakovsky

The first Hotel Transylvania was alright. Not amazing. Not awful. I’m surprised they made a sequel, and guess what? The sequel is also alright. Not amazing. Not awful. Not a bad way to spend with your kids, though if you don’t have kids, I don’t know why you’d bother. It’s basically an Adam Sandler animated film, so the jokes are silly, except their aimed even more at a younger audience than usual.

The sequel starts off playing a lot of catch up. Mavis (Gomez) and Jonathan (Samberg) are married, and she’s pregnant so quickly that parents are probably going to have a conversation about premarital sex afterward. Then the kid rapidly grows up, and he’s almost 5. The time when a vampire baby would get his fangs has approached quickly, and that’s basically the plot of the movie, so it has to be. The rest of the movie is thematically about accepting your kids for whatever they may be. It’s a great movie to show parents who might have a gay child. I felt like that was the “subtext” of the film, is loving your child no matter what. It’s an odd theme for kids, but an interesting choice to have a kids film with a theme for parents instead of kids. I’m not sure what the lesson is that kids will take away from this, except maybe that “family matters”?

A really talented voice cast, but there isn’t much here for adults to enjoy. It was alright. There were better animated films this year, but also worse ones. Glad I didn’t waste money on this in theatres though. On a side note, I hate when animated films end in dance offs. It was cute in Shrek, now it’s just really fucking lazy.

FINAL GRADE: C+