Adam Sandler has quite a bad rap with his recent movies – films like “Jack and Jill,” “Grown Ups 2” and “The Cobbler” all have abysmal ratings, but his 2011 film “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star,” which he wrote and produced, is the only film I’ve seen with a 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The main issue critics tend to have with Sandler’s films is that they are lazy, with little effort put into their jokes and directing. Despite being zanily animated by Sony Pictures Animation, Sandler’s latest animated feature, “Hotel Transylvania 2,” starts to show the similar problem as the film progresses, begging the question as to whether or not this sequel needs to exist.
“Hotel Transylvania 2” starts right where the first lets off. Mavis, the vampire daughter played by Selena Gomez, is getting married to a lovable human doofus, Jonathan, played by Andy Samberg. The couple gets married in Dracula’s hotel, with Dracula played by Sandler. All the other classic monsters show up, such as Wolfman, Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man and many others, all played by Sandler’s typical cast of “Saturday Night Live” buddies. In a rather rushed series of scenes, Mavis gets pregnant right after the wedding, has her baby boy, and he grows up to be four years old in a matter of montaged minutes. The bulk of the film follows Dracula trying to make his grandson Dennis into a full-fledged vampire before his fifth birthday, which is the point when he will either show his fangs and become a vampire or stay a human, like his father Jonathan.
To start with the best aspect of the film, Sony Pictures Animation does a phenomenal job animating the action, and most of the humor comes from the quick cuts and manic actions performed by the cartoonish monsters. The action and humor are faster than most other animated features out there. The rubbery visuals give the whole film a Saturday morning cartoon vibe, like a Tom and Jerry sketch, with sight gags coming at a rapid rate.
Unfortunately, the animation is the only part where “Hotel Transylvania 2” excels over other animated films, as the story, acting and writing fall into mediocrity. Sandler and Gomez do a fine job in their main roles, but Samberg is wasted potential. His faux-stoner voice was more annoying and less funny than anything he has ever done before, which is a shame given his recent success with “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” But no voice actor could save some of the jokes given to them — for some reason, the writers attacked social media and technology as viciously as an angry old man complaining about “the Facebook” and “the Twitters” with “kids these days.” None of the jokes about Dracula trying to work his phone landed for me, and I doubt any of the modern-age kids watching would find them funny either. Plus, this theme of exaggerated technology consumption led to Samberg saying “_Gotta_ take a selfie!” which is the worst line in any movie I’ve seen in a long time.
Ironically, while bashing technology, Sony still shamelessly advertises all its new technological products throughout the film. The number of product placement and pop culture references typical in other Adam Sandler movies are also present here, and are absurdly distracting. One scene had a Sony VAIO laptop with its logo facing the camera for a solid minute, sticking out like a sore thumb amid the gothic architecture and classic movie monsters. A disgruntled birthday party monster complains, “No one better give me a bad review on Yelp.” There is another scene in the car when “Worth It” by Fifth Harmony comes on the radio and everyone dances along to it, with Frankenstein nudging Dracula and saying something along the lines of “Come on Drac, everyone loves this song!” And it just goes on and on, with modern talk about products and services juxtaposing horribly against the enjoyable haunted setting.
The story also falls into traps typical of many sequels. The same plot points are repeated and the character’s previous lessons go ignored from the preceding film, just so the character arcs have somewhere to go in the new film. Dracula was supposed to learn to accept humans in the last film with Mavis and Jonathan getting married, but he conveniently forgets all that when he tries to force little baby Dennis into becoming a vampire instead of a human. He learns the same lesson all over again by the end about accepting people for who they are.
Overall, the plot runs into too many bumps to get its point across, but that point isn’t even needed since the last movie had the same message, so why make this film at all?
In the end, that is the question left with me: Why does this film exist? The animation is zany and enjoyable to watch, but the vampire dance scenes get old when you realize that’s all the movie has going for it. The script is lazy and repeats all the same points as the last film, and the characters don’t evolve at all between movies. The product placement is frustratingly obvious and too many jokes fall flat to recommend this to anyone except for little kids who need to be occupied for a quick hour and a half.
_MOVE gives “Hotel Transylvania 2” two out of five stars._
