PremiumHotel Transylvania: Transformania review: Bleh, bleh, bleh just about sums up this humourless monster flick
This is the fourth instalment in the franchise and sees much of its primary voice talent return, except Adam Sandler, who was the one who made Count Dracula fun earlier.
Last Updated: 08.06 PM, Jan 14, 2022
Story: Count Dracula is ready to retire from running Hotel Transylvania and hand over the reins to his daughter Mavis and Johnny. But when Johnny gets wind of this plan and tells Drac about his vision for the hotel, the latter puts the succession plan on hold, citing a cooked-up monster real-estate law. Determined to be accepted as part of the family, Johnny seeks Van Helsing’s help to become a monster, but in the process, Drac and some of the others turn human. But that’s not the worst of it – if not reversed soon enough, Johnny could turn into a mindless beast forever and the crystal on the monster/human ray is broken. Can Drac and co save Johnny?
Review: Let’s face it – Hotel Transylvania without Adam Sandler is just bleh, bleh, bleh. The franchise has never been about riveting plot lines – monsters hiding away from humans at Count Dracula’s hotel itself is a stretch. But what worked for it in three films so far was Sandler’s voice acting as Drac, paired with yet another funny man, Andy Samberg’s Johnny. The duo ensured there were enough laughs to keep audiences engaged. But there’s a limit to milking a franchise just because one or two films did decently well, right?
Three films itself was a bit much for Hotel Transylvania, and yet here we are with a fourth and if that isn’t bad enough, there’s no Sandler. Did they seriously think that they could get away by using voice actor and impressionist Brian Hull to do a Sandler? To be fair to Hull, he tries his best, and at times almost sounds like Sandler, although he couldn’t get the ‘Bleh, bleh, bleh’ right. What fails Hull and the rest of the voice talent is the unimaginative story and dialogues that are no fun at all – the jokes, if one may call them that, are absolute duds. Sadly, Samberg's attempts at being a loud dragon only becomes increasingly annoying in this film.
Even when Drac and Johnny head off to an Amazonian cave in search of a replacement crystal and undo their current predicament, there’s no sense of an adventure, and all we get is a sweaty and smelly Drac. There really isn’t anything worthwhile to write about this film.
Verdict: Should you stream Hotel Transylvania: Transformania? If I haven’t succeeded at dissuading you so far, well, watch it at your own risk. You’ve been warned!