Resolutions 2015: Hotel Transylvania

We made it to the end of another week! Huzzah! And you know what? I’ve got another excellent guest post for Resolutions to send you into the weekend! The incomparable Miss Zoë of The Sporadic Chronicles of a Beginner Blogger has stopped by today to share her film resolution! Now most of you already know Zoë, I’m sure, so you’ll know that my use of the word “incomparable” is pretty spot-on. Not only is she constantly putting up great movie and book reviews and various other awesomeness on her blog, but she is all over WordPress participating in blogathons and faithfully contributing to all our sites. I honestly don’t know how she does it, but I’m sure glad she does! Let’s see what she had to her resolution, shall we?

“What is this place? It’s a place I built, for all those monsters out there lurking in the shadows. Hiding from the persecution of human kind. A for them and their families to come to and be themselves. A void of torches, pitchforks, angry mobs. A place of peace, relaxation, and tranquillity.”
– Dracula

SYNOPSIS: In 1895, Dracula builds a resort in Transylvania, hidden from the humans, to raise his beloved daughter Mavis in a safe environment. In the present, the place is the Hotel Transylvania, where monsters bring their families to vacation far from the frightening humans. Dracula invites his friends – Frankenstein and his wife Eunice; Wayne and Wanda, the werewolves; Griffin, the invisible man; Murray, the mummy; Bigfoot, among others – to celebrate the 118th birthday of Mavis. When the party is ready to start, the 21-year-old Jonathan is walking through the forest and stumbles upon the hotel. Dracula sees Jonathan and disguises him as a monster to hide Jonathan from the guests. But Mavis also sees Jonathan and Dracula forces him to pose as a monster. Soon Mavis believes that Jonathan is the “zing” of her life despite the advice of her father about humans. – via IMDB

So Lady Cara was hosting her Resolutions blogathon again, and I wanted in. Of course I did. Why? Besides the fact that she is awesome? Because it will force me to sit down and watch something I keep putting off. Something that has now become a thing, too, seeing that I watched another animated feature for her. Last year I did WALL-E, which I liked, but I don’t think I watched another animation last year after that. Which is typical me. So this year I would stick to an animated film. I know that the other films I will definitely get to, mainly because they aren’t drawn or anything.

Hotel Transylvania has been on my watch list forever because seriously? Animated monsters? Dracula? Frankenstein? All of it? SOLD. But then… animated. So on the backburner. I had a whole load of old colleagues and friends tell me that Mavis reminded them of me, and I have never been quite sure how to take that up until recently. Seriously, not bad! I can live with that!

The movie starts out and it is so cute I was almost ready to retch. I could do this, though it isn’t really my scene, and then it moved on into amusing, and I was having so much fun. The animation was pretty cool and the dialogue gave me the giggles (Adam Sandler doing something decent? Really? Plus Fran Drescher, there was no way that was going to be anyone else). The one thing I did have a major gripe about was the music. Not being funny, but, erm… besides it not being my scene, it just felt disjointed in the movie. I expected something more rock ‘n roll, less club, rap, dance crap. Oh well, I guess you cannot have it all. The movie also whizzed by, surprisingly, which is a good thing. It was not a second longer than it needed to be.

I absolutely adored zombie Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, that was just too sweet! Also, big laughs for the hotel mariachi, I was in stitches whenever they cracked up a tune. I liked the little things, like the suits of armour reporting to Dracula, Dracula’s pet names for Mavis, the concept that humans are monsters and that the world is a big, scary place and dangerous as well as all the well-known and beloved monsters we got to see. I loved the extreme aversion to fire most of the monsters suffer from, and I totally want a “Do Not Disturb” shrunken head guarding my door.

The best scene in that whole movie for me was definitely Dracula having a meltdown knowing that Twilight is how vampires are being portrayed nowadays. I had such a good belly laugh right there.

7/10. While not my favourite movie in the genre, I can admit that it was rather enjoyable (though, like all animations, I cannot see myself rushing to watch it again). If you are into animations, I am sure that you will have a total blast with this one, and if you aren’t, well, there really are worse ones to get lumped with. Not remotely as lame as it was in danger of being, with a few good laughs sprinkled throughout, Hotel Transylvania works on most fronts except the music, which is a pity.

Little by little, year by year, this series will make an animated film fan of you yet, Zoë. 😉 Whatever you do with your weekend, my friends, I hope you have a good one! See you for resolutions on Monday!