‘Hotel Transylvania: Transformania’ Review: Fun Visual Gags Elevate a Paint-by-Numbers Story
While the visual humor is spot-on, “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” suffers from a massive lack of creative output in its screenplay and story.
Bringing Derek Drymon to co-direct the latest instalment in “Hotel Transylvania” was a stroke of genius. His work on “SpongeBob SquarePants” brought about some of the greatest visual gags on television. His comedic touch isn’t lost when “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” relies heavily on visual humor to make the audience laugh, but it’s a shame that the movie’s story has been done one too many times.
When you’ve exhausted all creative possibilities, you either do a time travel movie or a body-swap flick. “Transformania” decides to go with the latter, and it’s as predictable as you think it is. Count Dracula (Brian Hull, replacing Adam Sandler) plans to retire but is too afraid at giving the reins of the hotel to Johnny (Andy Samberg), fearing he will ruin what Hotel Transylvania is really about. So instead, he invents a “real estate law” where only monsters can rule the hotel. So, Johnny decides to transform himself into a monster by visiting Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan), who grants his wish through a Monsterfication Ray. This leads Dracula to try and transform him into a human again before Mavis (Selena Gomez) sees what Johnny has done. However, after a rather funny and dynamic foot chase, Dracula becomes a human. The crystal’s liquid lands into a bowl of punch, transforming Wayne (Steve Buscemi), Griffin (David Spade), Murray (Keegan Michael-Key), and Frankenstein (Brad Abell, replacing Kevin James) into humans. It’s now up to Johnny and Dracula to find a new crystal in South America to transform themselves back into their “normal” selves before Johnny becomes a brainless monster and loses his human personality.
So, we’ve got a race-against-time-body-swap film, with a paint-by-numbers story that never wants to go above its predictable arcs. Of course, Johnny and Dracula have some difficulties at the beginning of the film, but their experience in South America will make them grow closer together and possibly cause them to bond, even if, at some point, there will be an emotional rift between the two when Dracula tells him the truth about the “real estate law.” Within minutes of the movie beginning, the entire plot is written on the wall in front of you when Johnny annoys Dracula, and the rest just writes itself. For children who rarely watch movies, and movie night with their parents is a special occasion, it may be their latest “best movie ever!”, but for adults who watch movies on a semi-regular basis, it may not do much for them. Every decision made by the protagonists early on in the film will pay off in some capacity during the climax, as their “swap” will make them learn about themselves one way or another.
For Dracula, Johnny is a monster when he is human, but being an actual monster will cause the Vampire to look inside a person’s heart instead of seeing his daughter’s husband at face value. For Johnny, Dracula is just a groggy old man who, once he becomes human, is just an overprotective father who fears the worst for Hotel Transylvania and is afraid to leave his creation behind after 125 years of existence. This makes for a rather interesting dynamic between the two characters, even if we can see their resolve coming a mile away. If you didn’t know that Adam Sandler did not return to voice Dracula, you probably wouldn’t notice how Brian Hull does an uncanny soundalike imitation of Sandler’s voice (even nailing his iconic “bleh bleh bleh.”). Hull shares excellent chemistry with Sandberg’s Johnny, even if the jokes with Samberg’s character don’t land all the time.
The verbal humor in Transformania is hit-or-miss. The movie shines in its comedy during multiple scenes in which Drymon and co-director Jennifer Kluska use exaggerated animated characters to create terrific visual humor. Lots of stretch-and-squash, crash-zooms, and rapid editing aid in the comedy, and many punchlines are visual gags, whether reaction shots or the virtual camera panning out to reveal more of the frame. The comedic timing of these visual jokes is excellent, and the visual humor becomes more engaging as the characters are drawn into more over-the-top situations. The chase between Dracula and Johnny in the hotel is a highlight. Little kids will have an absolute riot, whereas adults will appreciate how the movie harkens back to the early days of “Looney Tunes” Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote sketches. As Johnny becomes more of a monster than a human, the movie takes a surprisingly dark route, and the animation becomes more detailed and expressive than in the first two acts of the picture.
While more detailed animation is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s certainly jarring when what comes before looks and feels terribly cheap. Unfortunately, the predictable script in “Transformania” complements the facile animation on display and is nowhere near as staggering and dynamic as Genndy Tartakovsky’s work on the first three installments. Yes, Sony Pictures Animation is known for crafting their animated work cheaper than, say, Disney and Pixar, but still, there’s a considerable downgrade in the film’s aesthetic versus “Summer Vacation”. Perhaps it because they had a better filmmaker at the helm who knew how to keep things exciting? Drymon knows how to do great visual humor, but doesn’t have the same capabilities as Tartakovsky, who blends the animation with the story for better effect.
In Transformania, the story is too distant from the animation because there’s a minimal investment with a plot we’ve all seen before, done in a way that feels too familiar for its own good. The voice cast is good enough to keep our interest going, and so does the film’s numerous visual gags, but the plot falters the movie more than anything else. If you’re going to have riotous physical and visual jokes as an integral part of your movie, then you need a compelling story to go with it. Unfortunately, the story is neither persuasive nor original, making an almost ten-year-old series end on a whimper.