Hotel Transylvania delivers a twist on the vampire-human romance of the Twilight Saga: Dracula has a cherished daughter, Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez) – at 118 years old, a mere teenager in vampire years who dreams of fleeing the confines of her unusual home.
When a human turns up at the Hotel Transylvania – a young backpacker who’s failed to heed local warnings about the creepy castle and its monsters – Mavis falls in love, and Dracula responds by attempting, at length, to scare the newcomer away.
The artistic style of Hotel Transylvania sits somewhere on the animation spectrum near Pixar’s Ratatouille and Despicable Me by Illumination Entertainment, but the sharp character art is often overwhelmed by high-speed scene changes, harem-scarem chases, and a profusion of in-your-face 3D gimmicks.
Younger children are likely to find it all a bit alarming, and there are few vaguely bawdy jokes, such as the female skeleton who’s embarrassed when caught “naked” in the shower.
The goofy, slapstick humour is never subtle, but then perhaps no-one should be expecting subtlety in a movie about a doting vampire dad who doesn’t like his daughter’s new boyfriend.
Although the family-friendly message of Hotel Transylvania isn’t delivered with the same grace as animated movies like Finding Nemo or Toy Story, its hyperactive 3D action is sure to keep older kids entertained, and the script is salted with sufficient ironic monster-movie in-jokes to keep their parents chuckling.