I had fairly low expectations for Hotel Transylvania when I entered the theater. It looked like another cute and stupid kids movie with mediocre animation and was voiced by Adam Sandler’s gang of friends. I hadn’t heard too much about it and wasn’t expecting much. So I was pleasantly surprised. The movie, with an admittedly thin and silly plot, was a lot of fun. The animation was frenetic and exciting and more than covered for the sins and contrivances of the plot. Then the credits rolled and it all made sense. Somehow I had missed that the movie was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. The TV animation wonder had spread his wings to feature films and it made my day. The movie was goofy and fun and there was a style to the animation that was all Tartakovsky. So, let’s see what it’s about.

Boy vampire meets girl vampire and out of their union a baby vampire is born. But then the angry mob of villagers attack and kill the wife. So Count Dracula is left with his baby girl Mavis to raise on his own. He builds a giant castle protected by a haunted forest and graveyard to raise Mavis out of the clutches of those scary, evil people. And what does a single Dad do with a giant house? He makes it into a hotel for monsters who want to get away from it all.

So now, Mavis is hitting the big 118 and the Count has plans. Not only has he invited all his monster buddies over for a giant birthday party for Mavis, he’s also come up with a brilliant plan to cure her desire to see the human world. Unfortunately a side effect of the plan causes a human to make it into the castle. Dracula is torn. He could kill the human, but that would set human-monster relations back years. And if the guests find out that a human is in the castle, that could end up causing them all to leave. And when Mavis and the human, Jonathan, start hitting it off, Dracula is in a bind that will force him to reconsider his life plan of protecting Mavis.

What the movie did well is some fun character designs (including making Mavis into a cute Goth girl). Tartakovsky has done an amazing job with the design and movement of the characters (which he has stated that he based off the old Looney tunes cartoons with their exaggerated movements. The movie works best when the characters are interacting with each other.

What the movie did poorly is the script, which is basically a girl monster version of Finding Nemo (overprotective Dad and the child who wants to explore the world) and not a very good one.

So I would somewhat recommend the movie for the Tartakovsky influence over it. A much better script would have made this an outstanding film instead of one that’s not bad. The good news is that we have a lot more Tartakovsky to look forward to since he’s rumored to be working on a Popeye movie in the Fleischer studio and Tartakovsky wants it to be “ten times more physical and crazy than we did in Hotel and ten times more character”. So, now I’m officially excited for the Popeye movie. As for Hotel Transylvania, go see it for a fun movie that’s better than it should be. Mildly recommended.