Hotel Transylvania
2012
**½
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Cast: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, CeeLo Green
Count Dracula builds a massive hotel in Transylvania to accomodate a variety of monsters and to keep her daughter Mavis safe from evil humans. As Mavis grows up, she is eager to venture into the outside world. Things come to a head when an unsuspecting human traveller strays into the hotel on the girl's 118th birthday. Genndy Tartakovsky's feature debut throws together two old Pixar movies, Finding Nemo (overprotective father) and Monsters, Inc. (imaginative creatures). It is not a surprise that this modest animation doesn't bristle with originality. The set-up sounds dark for a children's film, but the protagonist turns out to be a figuratively toothless vampire and the rest of the monsters are anything but scary. Followed by Hotel Transylvania 2.
