Monday, October 1, 2012

Hotel Transylvania - How did I not know Sandler was involved?

First you notice Adam Sandler's voice as Count Dracula.  Then you recognize the voices of Andy Samberg, David Spade, and Kevin James.  That's when realize you just paid money to sit through an Adam Sandler production.  

Hotel Transylvania wasn't terrible but it wasn't ParaNorman either.  ParaNorman was deep, had a message and was kind of scary.  Hotel Transylvania was light, had a bit of a message and was not at all scary.  I think I actually did laugh or at least crack a smile a couple of times during the movie.  My main problem was that I couldn't get past what I thought was a big problem in the story.  Yes, I'm about to quibbling over the story in an Adam Sandler movie. 

The deal is this: Monsters feel all persecuted from humans for being all monster-y.  They need a place to get away and be themselves so Count Dracula provides them with a shangri-la of sorts.  Meanwhile, Drac gets on his soap box every chance he gets with his message that  humans are awful, terrible, torch-weilding, pitchfork-carrying meanies.  His hatred of humans is in reaction to the death of his wife and also serves as a way for him to keep a watchful eye over his beloved daughter, Mavis.  Of course Mavis wants to get out and see the world but Drac wants to keep her safely tucked away in his human-free hotel.  Enter the bumbling human, Johnny.  He stumbles into the hotel and Drac has to get him out of there without alerting any of his guests.  Too bad he falls for Drac's daughter and doesn't want to leave.  If Mavis finds out that not all humans are bad she might actually leave Drac behind. 

So my big problem with the story has to do with the "monsters" being so anti-human.  Three of said "monsters" are actually human or part-time humans.  The invisible man is human. Wolfman should be a part-time human but stays wolfie throughout the flick. Lastly we have Quasimodo who is definitely human.  The latter is the one who finds out about the Johnny being in the hotel and decides to try and cook him (being French of course he's the hotel chef).  So maybe we could argue that if the world sees you as a monster then you lose your humanity and buy into your monster mentality?  I dunno.  It's a kids' movie so there's no reason to get into deep discussions about what makes someone a monster.  However it would be nice to have a little accuracy.  Or is that just me?


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