Hotel Transylvania: Enjoyable Despite Sandler

Hotel Transylvania is one of those delightful animated films that's able to serve up enjoyment for both the kids in the audience and the parents who were forced to spend way too much money to take them there. Kids will no doubt appreciate the sharp, slapstick comedic timing of director Genndy Tartakovsky, who should be given immense credit for showing respect and appreciation for the countless icons and archetypes of horror that populate the film while also making them charming, relatable and, most importantly, not scary.

On paper, the titular resort in Hotel Transylvania was opened longed ago by Count Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) for a singular purpose: to give him and his ghoulish buddies—Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the Wolfman (Steve Buscemi), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), and Murray the Mummy (CeeLo Green)—a safe haven for rest and relaxation away from the world of the humans who fear and scorn them.

On a deeper and more selfish level, the luxurious (in a monstrous sort of way) castle is just another form of control for an overprotective father who doesn't want his innocent daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), to ever have to be exposed to a humankind that so cruelly robbed her of her mother when she was just a baby. For a long time, Dracula has remained faithful to his vow to keep his daughter safe, filling her head with tall tales about the horrors of people (even going so far as to stage a proverbial pitchforks and torches scenario with the help of his zombie servants) when Mavis requests just a taste of the outside world on the eve of her 118th birthday. Nothing, he promises, will ruin the elaborate party he's planned for his darling daughter.

But, you know what they say—the best laid plans of mice and men…although, perhaps in this case, “the best laid plans of flying rodents and the living dead” seems more appropriate.

Though opened for over a century without its halls being defiled by the presence of a human, the streak for Hotel Transylvania comes to an end when backpacker Jonathan (Andy Samberg) stumbles through the dense woods and into the front door. As if it wasn't bad enough that a human has discovered the hotel, it soon becomes clear that Mavis is smitten with him and he's winning over the crowd with his energy and enthusiasm. This could very well be the worst nightmare for Dracula, a creature who is more used to occupying the nightmares of others.

Should there be opposition to Hotel Transylvania, it will undoubtedly come from the adults, especially those, such as myself, who are sick of Adam Sandler's box office saturation. Seeing as he lends his voice talents—if indeed you can consider Sandler's grating combination of Opera Man and every old person voice he's ever done, "talent"—there's more than enough of him to distract and annoy.

There are other adults out there, I'm sure, who would bemoan the fact that the characters immortalized by Bela Lugosi, et al. are being used to delight the population rather than terrify or unsettle them, but even hardcore horror fans must admit that Hotel Transylvania respects the decades of iconography that has come before it and is even able to utilize these legendary characters to make a statement on how the attitude towards what used to be considered taboo and macabre has radically changed. Hotel Transylvania is not a dumbing down of what has come before it, but instead an entryway of appreciation for an audience who might not yet be old enough to understand and respect the art of classic horror films.