Review

In 1895 Dracula builds a castle hidden away from the humans in order to protect his beloved Daughter Mavis. The castle is protected by a dark forest fill of ghosts, a zombie graveyard, and apparently piranha in the moat. The Count decides that the castle should become a sanctuary for monsters, where they can get away from it all, and most importantly not fear the humans who the Count thinks are out to destroy all monsters.

Flash forward to the present and Mavis, now 118, is chomping at the bit to get out into the wider world and experience new things. Dracula of course is against this and uses a fiendish plan to convince Mavis all humans are evil, oh and throws her the annual birthday bash. The fly in this particular monster mash ointment is Jonathan, a U.S backpacker who arrives unannounced. Naturally Mavis and Jonathan hit it off, much to Dracula's horror. But as we know in the movies the path of true love never runs smoothly. Can the zing overcome parental domination and stereotyping?

One of the interesting things I find about writing for the ScaryMs is that the site might present itself as the big bad horror blood, guts, and T&A site, but it also takes time out to see what's hitting the cinema and DVD release queues for the non-traditional horror beatnik. Hence today's offering, Hotel Transylvania, a movie aimed at the sandpit demographics. And yes we're talking a feel good family entertainment toon that is doing it's very best not to be scary, but which slips from time to time in achieving that goal. To be honest the attempt here is to out schlock the House of Mouse at their own game.

The animation comes at you crisp and clear, though there's no real attempt made at merging with the matt painted backgrounds, a couple of times during the movie I noted the characters standing out from the backdrops. Predictably a lot of effort has gone into making the screen busy, with a hell of a lot of detail and in some scenes an almost chaotic amount of characters in frame. I'm guessing the busy look is to take attention off the oft times incredibly inane script. Disney got past this stage a few years back, writers Baynham and Smigel show no respect for their audience. But anyways can't really fault the animation, it's not going to set the world on fire but is pleasant enough to look at.

I really can't stand lazy movie making that doesn't respect the audience, prime example is the script for this schlock in a basket

Speaking of the script, oh dear god was that ever a mess. We get the standard sugar coated messages, Disney would have been embarrassed to embrace theses ones, and what I guess is meant to pass for humour. I wasn't remotely smiling over here. There's no attempt at writing anything for the adults dragged along to the cinema, and zero in the way of cleverness involved. By about two minutes in I knew exactly where this movie was headed, and it didn't deviate in any manner what so ever from that path. However the various themes are so mishandled that you are left with the feeling there was a larger movie being developed that was trimmed down of excess, some developments come out of nowhere, and there's no attempt to coherently develop anything. Messers Baynham and Smigel are simply going through the motions here, there is no art involved, and I was at times wondering when the whole sorry mess might end. No points for a script that was thread bare and lacking in anything like a unique idea apart from the initial premise.

For those wondering about content, we pretty much get the standard U.S style Universal monster parade. Besides Dracula, we get the Wolfman, plus wife and family, the invisible man, various Mummies, the creature from the black lagoon, and a whole bunch of others. Once again showing the lazy writing this movie presents, Frankenstein is the monster rather than the mad Scientist, oh and his wife is along for the ride. We also get the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Witches, shrunken heads, and of course zombies. Did I mention a giant tarantula, and various other creatures from the 1950s Creature Features? Clearly not the ideal content for toddlers, there is the odd scare thrown in, but older kids should be able to handle the content here.

Not sure I want to say much more about this movie, no doubt aimed at the single digit chick market, but it probably works for that demographic like a shower fill of skeletons. I'm almost always up for an animated dark genre outing but this one was sickly sweet with a couple of messages that were pounded into me like a stake through the heart. I was about ready to turn off at the half way mark to be honest. Not recommended to anyone who doesn't have ankle biters of the loving Disney schlock variety, you might be able to join the dots, sure as hell no one else will be. This thing is up to review length, good, I'm out of here.