Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation is directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. It is the third entry in the Hotel Transylvania franchise and it already goes in a different direction. It takes the famous monsters to sea on a cruise. The cruise’s captain is hellbent on killing Drac, who misses all the obvious signs and ends up falling for her. This movie includes the voice talents of Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key and Katherine Hahn.
When it comes to this franchise, my feelings can be summed up in one word: okay. I like all three movies. I like the voice-cast. I love the animation, it’s the best part about these movies in my opinion. The first movie was surprisingly good, I loved the humor, plot, characters and obviously animation. The second movie was a bit of a boring movie, I know it’s for children but even if I did watch it as a child I would get bored. It was decent, I liked the arc with the baby and that’s it.
When I first heard that they were taking the monsters to sea, I was baffled, it’s called Hotel Transylvania, also why would they release a Halloween movie in July. The whole thing was stupid in my mind. Now that I have seen the movie, I am glad they went that route. It was a breath of fresh air and it proved creatively that you can do a lot of things on a cruise with these characters.
Hotel Transylvania 3 is a perfectly fun and inventive movie that knows what it is, sticks with it and keeps you entertained for the whole ninety minute runtime. What I love about not only this movie but all three of them is how inventive they are with the animation. I love the movements and expressions these characters. It’s a pure cartoon and I mean that in the best way possible. It doesn’t have any new life lessons that any other animated movie hasn’t put out already. The story is very predictable, there’s nothing new. I didn’t go in expecting anything better than what I got. I guess that in itself is a flaw. This franchise should be more a bit more bold with it’s storytelling.
This movie was gorgeous to look at, I love the use of colour in this movie. The backgrounds are filled with colour. It’s not just a cruise and the sky above it. If I had to list the one flaw of the entire franchise it would be the tendency to use modern music to entertain the youngsters. I don’t hate it, sometimes it works but when it doesn’t it’s cringe inducing. This movie used music a lot to my surprise. In my opinion, it sounds like the writers didn’t know what to do and just said “music!” and then that happened. There’s even a singing Kraken although it was voiced by Joe Jonas so I’ll let that slide. Speaking of voice-acting, the cast was great as usual in particular Adam Sandler as Dracula but the real star in this movie in my opinion is Katherine Hahn as the Captain. She was amazing, I loved her character and the moves she makes, she was hilarious.
In the end Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation is a fun and charming addition to this franchise. I’m still deciding on whether or not this is the best movie out of the three, it’s between this one and the first one. I really had fun with this movie. If you like the first two, you are going to like this one.
owen is a filmaholic 