Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
AMAZON/SONYFarewell, Adam Sandler. Your rise through the ranks to Uncut Gems and back to the degenerate comedies has been a journey, but it means he misses out on Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, the fourth in a series of dull animated comedies. He is not missing much, nor are audiences lucky enough to skip out on this Sony and Amazon Studios project. Brian Hull takes the reigns of a noticeably different Count Dracula, and the rest of the cast rally around him with little to no effort dispersed. What more can they do for this feature directed by Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska? Their feature debut is a grim inevitability of the commercialisation of animation for toys, rather than treasured memories.
No memories can be formed with Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, a film whose longevity was past its sell-by date by the time Mel Brooks was showing up as a supporting performer. Generations have clashed and holidayed together, now this cast of Universal Monsters caricatures are set to take on a mortal, human form. Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg are back on mediocre form once again, returning to see this feature through its fourth big-screen iteration. But after a miniseries here and a short there, it feels better suited to the streaming platform it slumps out on. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania scrapes through the bottom of the barrel and hits the bedrock below. Not even the slight comedy that the earlier features offered can be found within. Instead, the glossy animation and startlingly dull caricatures take precedence.
Of course they do. Where else can Drymon and Kluska take this feature? Four films spent debating the back-and-forth relationship between Count Dracula and his human son-in-law. It made little sense for the first feature and even less for the fourth. A switch for either character, with Dracula now human and susceptible to blisters and sunburn, with Johnny Loughran (Samberg) transformed into a dragon. This choice is a dud. The quick-cut animation of a human battering away mosquitos is grating and a pain for the eyes. Most of Hotel Transylvania: Transformania is a strain on the senses. With no clear villain or goal for this feature, it is hard to care for it. Not even the visuals will provide much love since the target audience has grown far older than they were the first time this series offered a release.
But as audiences change with the times, so too do filmmakers. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania is one of the few to fail in accepting the changing tides. Drymon and Kluska still believe these characters have fruitful and exciting relationships and dynamics worth exploring. They do not. Messy and corruptible, with some ultimately lacklustre animation that loses a surprising amount when Sandler ditches the burning wreckage. Illumination Entertainment may not have a stake in the Hotel Transylvania series, but they have certainly caused enough of a wreckage to influence and spike other features trying to appeal to children with pocket money to splash on action figures and hokey writing that adapts these characters, rather poorly, for the next generation of suckers.