Hotel Transylvania loses Adam Sandler, but retains its animated energy in Transformania
The fourth and final movie in the series enlivens a worn-out story with delightful animation
Film Reviews Hotel Transylvania
A well-known leading actor removing himself from a franchise in its fourth entry would usually be a sign of major downgrade—a signal that a movie series has lost its mojo. To animation fans, though, the departure of Adam Sandler from Hotel Transylvania: Transformania might be a blessing in disguise. For years, big-studio animation has relied on the invisible star power of celebrities giving undistinguished vocal performances. Now, quite accidentally, the fourth Hotel Transylvania is led by a voice actor: YouTube vocal impressionist Brian Hull.
Now, Sandler wasn’t giving an especially lazy vocal performance in the earlier Hotel Transylvania films. His goofy, SNL-style accent work was a perfect fit for a cuddly cartoon version of Dracula—which Hull capably imitates here. But the Sandman’s abandonment of Drac resolves a long-standing friction between his old-guy sentimentality (the earlier movies are largely about Drac as an overprotective single dad) and the bouncy style of series director Genndy Tartakovsky, who favors wild gags and wilder cartoon poses.
Tartakovsky actually vacates his usual role in Transformania as well; it’s the first Hotel Transylvania picture he hasn’t directed. Instead, he seems to slip into Sandler’s behind-the-scenes role: executive producing, co-writing, and—based on how the characters still stretch and coil their bodies—guiding the comic house style. To that end, veteran animation pros Jennifer Kluska and Derek Drymon take over directing duties. (If Sandler had triumphed in this stand-off, just assume Allen Covert would have somehow been hired as a storyboarder.)
Kluska’s work on the zippy recent DC Superhero Girls cartoon, along with an executive producer credit for co-star Selena Gomez, might create false hopes for greater focus on Gomez’s character, Dracula’s daughter Mavis. Alas, this is yet another Hotel Transylvania story about an aging father with a vision for his perfect family, ultimately learning to let go of the past and accept his daughter’s goofball husband Johnny (Andy Samberg) into the fold. Here, Drac hems and haws over whether to leave his beloved hotel to Mavis and Johnny when he retires, blanching at how Johnny might change the place. And at this point, even Drac’s faithful sidekicks are growing weary of the repetition. Invisible man Griffin (David Spade), werewolf Wayne (Steve Buscemi), mummy Murray (Keegan-Michael Key), and undead monster Frank (Brad Abrell, subbing in for Kevin James, the only major Sandler Guy to leave in solidarity) collectively grouse about being asked to lie to Mavis once again as Dracula works out his issues.
Happily, those issues also include the movie’s most inspired wrinkle: an invention from the mad Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) that turns humans into monsters, and vice versa. Naturally, Drac and Johnny both get zapped. Johnny grows a bunch of cool fangs and claws, his enthusiastic gangliness intact. The always-cranky Dracula, meanwhile, turns human and receives a taste of genuine middle age. Bringing monster-powered silliness to life for three movies has apparently left the animators well-prepared to caricature the indignities of human suffering: Just as the Hotel Transylvania movies provide introductory, non-scary versions of classic monsters, Drac’s writhing pains, thinning hair, bloodshot eyes, and copious mosquito bites amount to a kid-friendly version of body horror. Adult companions, meanwhile, may wince in recognition of Drac’s newfound limitations.
After Van Helsing’s machine breaks, the eternally mismatched Johnny and Dracula set off to South America to find the magical crystal needed to fix Van Helsing’s machine. The rest of the ensemble follows, omce Mavis figures out that Johnny may keep mutating until he’s no longer able to change back.
The character and emotional dynamics of these situations are largely old hat, but the filmmakers keep finding new physical dynamics to keep the animation fresh and funny. Whenever a big chase sequence threatens to turn into a de facto theme park ride, the movie will throw out a series of quick-hit gags or harebrained visual ideas, whether big (a cavern of reflective crystals sending the characters’ distorted faces zig-zagging around the room) or small (when Van Helsing needs to defend his basement laboratory, he outfits himself in World War I garb and builds a foxhole, like Bugs Bunny). Indeed, the snaky, topsy-turvy monster Johnny becomes is more fun to look at than any Illumination character ever designed (though, to be honest, this is true of the human Johnny as well).
Whether because of Sandler’s absence or the natural course of the series, Transformania does feel like a wrap-up, and sometimes a hasty one. Why-change-course-now remnants of the other movies’ worst moments are visible in the marginalization of Mavis, as well as its pop-music pandering. Having Drac croon “Just The Two Of Us” feels like a mawkish idea tailor-made for Sandler, while an early deployment of “Cha-Cha Slide” is more revolting than any of the monsters. These are among the many good reasons that the Hotel Transylvania series doesn’t get as much recognition as their Lord/Miller-produced Sony Animation stablemates like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or The Mitchells vs. The Machines. But it’s heartening to see a big-ticket cartoon franchise end with the animation as its true star.
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I have enjoyed this series with a mild “gave me something to do for a bit”-feeling. So I guess I will watch this one as well.
On the one hand, I’m curious to know the details of Sandler’s departure, because how lazy do you have to be to back out of a couple of afternoons of voice acting work, even if you do have long-simmering creative differences? But on the other hand, Sandler seems to be precisely that lazy, so I’m not too surprised.
i bet it’s nothing salacious.if i had to guess he signed on for 3, did 3, and didn’t care to come back. i assume he did it for his kids 10 years ago (probably signed on more like 12 or 13) and now they’re too old to care if he does it or not.
It might be a Sony thing; he was their big in-house star when the series started, but he became a Netflix guy around the release of the second film.
also, i mean, adam sandler isn’t cheap. they probably hedged their bets that the actual fans of these movies (kids) will neither care nor notice and saved a few million dollars.
Absolutely in the same boat here. I have no idea why Sandler left honestly and would love to learn why seeing as he said it was one of his most enjoyable movie making experiences.
I can’t claim to have any direct insight, but from what I understand, it’s actually likely very much the opposite of Sandler desiring an easy/lazy paycheck—and contrary to that reputation (and/or the actual quality of some of his worst movies), Sandler is very involved in basically everything about his movies. And I think that’s true here, too: Sandler very much took ownership of much of the series, and according to Tartakovsky, much of the clash on the sequel had to do with Sandler and Smigel going in one direction that sounded more dialogue-driven and not that interesting to kids or animators, and Tartakovsky wanting something more, well, animated. (Tartakovsky has been open about this in interviews, and IIRC there are some emails from the Sony hack that include some back-and-forth on the sequel’s development.) The third one, which I think is probably the best of the bunch, leans more in the animated-gags direction, and I wonder if Sandler was unhappy with the results? No idea how early on in the process Sandler left, or if it was an acrimonious split or more of an “eh, no thanks, I’ve done enough of these” but I doubt that a fourth one was greenlit with the expectation that Sandler *wouldn’t* do it.
I suspect they probably gave Spade a raise to keep him around, since he’s the real voice actor of the group (Boom, baby!)
Speaking of which, yea Sandler moving on means a pro voice actor for the role (yay) but the rest of the cast is still “Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, Jim Gaffigan, Keegan-Michael Key, David Spade, Brad Abrell, Kathryn Hahn” so this is still an extremely name-droppy group (for parents).
Perhaps he’s too busy working on Uncut Gems: The Animated Series.
Uncut Gem Babies: Friendship Is Manic
I’m very much not a fan of Sandler, but just looking at his output, it’s pretty hard to call him ‘lazy’.Beyond that, I generally don’t watch “store-brand Pixar”, so I have no opinion of the movie(s).
Looking at his output is exactly what would cause you to (accurately) call him lazy. The filming movies on vacations thing is extremely true.
you would just as easily flip that and say he’s always working on vacation 😉
I’m glad they’re shot of him, but it’s a shame he couldn’t take his boring-ass character with him when he went. These movies have always been about the supporting cast, and the more or less straight-man main character has just been a ball and chain.
Its always confused me that Genndy Tartakovsky has made so many of these. Does he enjoy them that much or is the money just that good?
Probably a little bit of both (I mean, he’s got to enjoy the chance to bring really cartoony action to normally-staid American CGI features, even in a work-for-hire gig), plus the hope that Sony will eventually let him do a dream project if he keeps playing ball on the market-driven films.
I’m guessing that doing just one of these films gives him enough financial leeway to spend a couple of years making more fringe stuff like Primal. He probably has fun seeing what kind of stuff he can sneak in movies that are supposed to be pure fluff (I know I would).
Whatever makes Genndy happy is what will make me happy honestly. He truly understands that animation doesn’t need to pander nor be dumbed down to be fully enjoyed. He still to this day has the same simple yet potent philosophy that makes his works such masterpieces that I wish more animators would follow- he makes what HE wants to see, and if people by extension, enjoy his work, then that’s just a bonus for him. I guess that’s why he wasn’t as involved this time around as the other 3. That being said, I REALLY HOPE that they let him make the Popeye film he wanted to make because that teaser he made was Annie/Oscar worthy on its own.
I mean he did Dexter’s lab as well so it’s not totally out of his wheelhouse.
He has to fund his more artistic endeavors like Primal (waiting for the next season anxiously) and Samurai Jack (wish he’d do more in that universe) and TBH the Transylvania films are all fine popcorn films.
Honestly, I think it’s both. (The only reason I have speculation about this is that, from what I’ve read, he seems to be a pretty honest interview subject.) I think he enjoys getting to direct a feature-length cartoon starring a bunch of crazy monster characters… and I think he also is perpetually hoping that it will be a well-paid studio gig that will lead to something he really loves getting off the ground.
We’ll see if he can ever get his Popeye animated movie off the ground. He’s been developing that one for almost a decade.
Like how general audiences overlooked his magnus opus, aka Primal? Criminally underrated, but oozes with his passion and love. Still get irked how my general cartoon loving friend groups and forums still turn a blind eye to it, yet praised critically with good reason.
iirc, it was theorized (or maybe outright stated by Tatakovsky) that he was doing these studio things in the hopes of getting a Samurai Jack movie to happen. Of course, a few years ago he actually got a final season of that on Adult Swim, so I’m eager to see what his NEXT potential passion project might be.
Considering these are pretty well-received (and not just in a financial way) it’s not like he’s publicly slumming it for money. I expect it strikes a pretty good balance between fun and cash money.
I have always been a proponent of “Operation: Get Paid” so I really can’t begrudge him trying to have a little fun while he’s earning his paycheck.
Wonder if Mel Brooks came back… guessing not since he wasn’t mentioned. His casting as the grandpa was inspired. Just finished reading his memoir, what an absolute treat it was.
He’s not in it, no.
I’m kinda surprised how little Drac’s new wife has been in the promos.
I’ve enjoyed all three of them so I’ll definitely watch this… Part 2 was the weakest. Rare series that me and my kids both enjoy
I’ve never seen any of these movies, but I’ve seen the trailer like three dozen times now on TV and I hope the kids is allowed to stay a cool dragon, he seems happy about it.
Doubtful they brought back Dana the camp counselor (voice by Dana Carvey.) I always felt they could have explored that character a little more.
My daughter loves these movies, so I’m sure she’s excited for this one.
Does Wolfman turn into Some More News’s Cody Johnston? Cause I think that’s Some More News’s Cody Johnston.
I unfortunately am aware of the rampant sexualization of Mavis by real life grown up adult content creators and its kinda gross. That’s the most I know of this series and I hate that enough before Sandler
I don’t doubt that it’s [more than] kinda gross coming from “content creators” (as I imagine this involves people like… making their own graphic Mavis fic???) but the character *is* a married adult in 3/4 of these movies (and I think an adult in all of them? The joke in the first one is that she’s come of age by turning 118, which makes it either totally cool that she’s married by the next one, or maybe kinda weird because it seems like she’s still the vampire equivalent of college-aged?).
It is kind of odd she’s Dracula’s precious little girl in the first one and has popped out a baby with no visual reference of passage of time in the second one.
Because she’s a vampire. How do you show the passage of time?
By the 3rd film she’s apparently 126, so not that weird in the end. It’s kind of a recurring problem in fantasy and sci-fi works that employ different rates of aging for different species, largely because those works rarely delve deep enough into the inherent values dissonance nor do they explore what childhood even is to these long-living creatures.Like, Mass Effect’s Liara is 106, yet it’s pointed out in the first game that this makes her barely older than a child. But you don’t have anyone complaining that the series features essentially ephebophilia – probably because a) she looks like an adult woman, b) her species’ sole purpose out-of-story is to be space eyecandy, so we don’t want players’ feeling queasy about it and c) current BioWare’s writers aren’t skilled enough to tackle that nuance nor do they even care enough about their own lore most of the time.Another, separate problem is that age in mainstream kids’ animation isn’t exactly made obvious, since signs of aging/ugliness are identifiers of villainy. Look at Encanto – Mirabel, Luisa and Isabela are 15, 19 and 22 respectively, but the only indication that Isabela is an adult is that she’s available for marriage. Bruno, Julieta and Pepa are all supposed to be 50, but those are some crips fucking 50 year olds – the haggard hermit Bruno looks like Tumblr’s next boyfriend, the only indicator of Pepa’s age is her having a teenage son and Julieta has some grayish hairs.
I always understood that “child” meant that Liara was still considered very young by Asari standards, not that she hadn’t reach maturity. Grogu might still look and act like an infant but Liara has a doctorate in archeology.The different rate of aging never made much sense to me: how could Grogu’s species survive by remaining a vulnerable child for so long? And having a body that doesn’t age really fast shouldn’t mean that your brain develops slowly.
It’s honestly inconsistent in the game lore itself. It’s said that Asari reach mental and sexual maturity as early as age 40 (this is how they learn when someone is Ardat-Yakshi), yet Samara says that she herself was a child at that age (which, fucking yikes). They seem to largely go independent from parents once they hit 60. Liara herself, despite the doctorate, is referred to as quite young and it’s implied that her scholarly achievements at that age are unusual, so it’s hard to say if it’s supposed to mean that she’s 16, 19, 25 or 30. It doesn’t help that in the first game she’s written in a very deadpan manner that can be interpreted as anything from youthful naivete, alien distance to even misunderstanding of social cues (and Ali Hillis plays her very dryly).Many worldbuilders and writers simply handwave this shit and never actually think about the larger mechanisms at play when they write them. Like, Mass Effect 2 implies that the Asari are so attractive to every species because of some neurochemical fuckery that could even make it so that observers hallucinate them as more similar to themselves, which makes absolutely no sense on so many levels. Hell, Mass Effect had written lore that all Turians go through mandatory military training regardless of gender and function, but you only saw the first female Turian in DLC for 3 (and not during a goddamn war that decimated their chain of command) – and BioWare admitted that it was so because they never came up with a design for female Turians in the first place (one example appeared in a comic book but it was pretty much just a male Turian sans the back fringes and the canonicity of which is debatable because the supplementary material for ME is completely fucked), despite writing a fairly substantial bit of lore about them in the first place.So I’d say Grogu is a kid because they needed a rarely seen species and also make him a kid, and not much thought was put into it otherwise. Yeah, it’s maddening and pointless. It honestly sucks because Bellisario’s Maxim can only go so far me – I don’t mind physics that work for the benefit of an action scene at all and I can handwave someone surviving an explosion or developing tech that works in a very specific, magical even manner, but once it’s apparent that the worldbuilding doesn’t matter to the point where they won’t even retcon it, just ignore it, I just feel like a sucker for caring in the first place.
Mirabel, Luisa and Isabela are 15, 19 and 22 respectively
I could tell Isabela was an adult because she was modeled closer to the rest of the adults in the film. Luisa was harder to pin down because she’s clearly older than most of the Madrigal children but because of her gift she’s also built like a full grown adult.Mirabel is clearly on the younger side, and the movie makes it clear that we go from her “failed” gift ceremony to the current day with Antonio.
What a weird hangup. Adult content creators rampantly sexualise literally everything. I’ve seen art that turned neapolitan ice cream into a fuckable person. If you’re worried about R34 artists, there’s not a single thing on Earth safe for you to enjoy.Besides, in the grand scheme of things, Mavis is B-tier at the most. She pales in comparison to any Disney princess, comics heroine, Nintendo character, or magical pony.
What a weird hangup. Adult content creators rampantly sexualise literally everything.
…that doesn’t make it okay.
I’ve never seen any of these films in their entirety, but what little I have seen was visually so fun and wacky. (Which I’ve desperately wanted more from these big budget animated films) But the voice cast (Sandler & co) and jokes were always a big turnoff for me. I need to finally bite the bullet and at least watch this one or the 3rd. For Genndy!
Basically all the characters are decent versions of the actors’ stock characters. So Drac is a fine Sandler character. If you like okay Sandler, he’s innocuous. Fran Drescher is basically doing Fran Drescher. Buscemi is barely doing anything Spade is doing Spade (again, this is not perfect casting as Kuzco level, just…fine). Samberg is having fun trying to make himself more and more of a cartoon with each movie and it works for him. The rest of the cameo cast of SNL-ers is also fine. They do what they do and they do it well enough (Lovitz is a ham; Parnell is droll; etc).The only true suck is Kevin James’s Frank is…Kevin James. So literally he brings absolutely NOTHING to the table. He doesn’t ruin his scenes. He just doesn’t add anything either. But then, that’s all he’s EVER done in anything he’s ever been in, so hardly a shock.If you ignore the whole Sandler crew thing, they’re fine animated flicks. The cartoonier moments, like the review says, are the best parts. My wife and I really enjoyed any scenes with Blobby for some reason, because they’re basically the most Looney Tunes-esque moments in the flicks.
Losing Adam Sandler is the kind of thing I’d normally cheer, but he’s actually fine in these movies. It’ll be weird changing voice actors in the fourth movie.What’s even weirder is the plot of this movie hinges on Dracula not having truly accepted Danny, which flies in the face of Drac’s character development over the last 3 movies.
Yeah, the Hotel Transylvania Drac is pretty much an asshole to his family and has to keep learning the same lesson every couple of years.
I think a lot of people can identify with having a family member like that.
It’ll be weird changing voice actors in the fourth movie.
Having actually put this movie on without seeing any of the others…I’d have had no idea it wasn’t actually Adam Sandler unless someone pointed it out to me.Hell, when the movie starts I heard the human husband guy talking and was like “Oh did they also need to get a sound alike for Andy Samberg?” and was shocked to learn that no…that was actually him.
I enjoyed watching/hearing Sandler in these because he was basically doing the same voice as The Goat from his old comedy CD and I kept waiting for Drac to tell them to put him in the mosh pit, crank it up, f*ckers.
So how do they deal with the fact that these characters need to consume human blood to survive?
I believe in the first film they mention that human blood is largely too fatty for vampires’ tastes and they prefer to subsist on blood substitutes.
Ugh. Reminds me of The Pirates That Don’t Do Anything
Peter: Hey, is The Count a vampire?
Brian: What’s that?
Peter: Well, he’s got these big fangs. Have they ever shown him doin’ somebody in and then feedin’ on ‘em?
Brian: You’re, y-you’re asking if they’ve ever done a Sesame Street in which the Count kills somebody and then sucks their blood for sustenance.
Peter: Yeah.
Brian: No, they’ve never done that.
— Family Guy, “Family Guy Viewer Mail #1″
I put this on over the weekend because I was looking for something new for my kids to try out. I dunno if it’s “good” but holy shit based on some of the other animated movies we’ve watched in the past few weeks (Coco, Encanto, even the Paw Patrol movie) this thing goes from 0-60 at an exhausting rate.That opening party scene is just rampant noise and color and I felt like “Holy shit movie give me a minute here.” I felt like I was having a panic attack.