Someone I knew in my personal life watched this film recently and I didn’t know what to watch during dinner so I thought I’d put this on, there’s not going to be too much gore in it. While I didn’t enjoy the film, the ending did make me cry, which is a bit of a conundrum.

Hotel Transylvania follows Dracula who has a daughter and wants to keep her safe after humans killed his wife and tried to kill them as well. He creates a hotel where monsters can go and feel safe in, however this changes on the eve of his daughters 118th birthday when a human accidentally manages to get in.

Dracula then has to learn that not all humans are alike and some humans are good and a lot has changed since his wife was murdered, and he needs to let go and allow his daughter to have her own life as well. It’s a classic family film of a young bird wanting to leave the nest and the parent birds not being ready to let them do that yet and then realising in the end they have to let their bird go…I don’t know where all these bird metaphors are coming from.

My only issue with this film is, yes, it’s a family film, it’s a kids film, I get that but it is very dumbed down. There’s a lot of gross jokes in it that I feel have no place other than to get a cheap laugh out of children. The story is very simple and doesn’t really bring anything new to the table and the characters are quite one note and don’t have too much depth apart from the main ones. However the ending made me cry because it is a sweet moment, watching your child go off to live a new life with possibly a new partner is sad and sweet and something every parent will go through and that is a very sweet moment because you realise the characters have changed and changed for the better.

However with this human I do not see him and the vampire girl lasting 10 minutes! He seems far too much of a free spirit and you know he’s going to get high on acid at some rave party in a forest and hook up with some other girl and then she’ll suck her blood and rip her head off and that’s a whole different story and I hope it comes up in Hotel Transylvania 2.

Would I recommend it? Yes if you have children, no if you’re an adult. I don’t feel this is a story for adults as it is too simple and even for older children I think it would be too simple. I’m looking at the nine years and below bracket here because there are so many good kids films out there that have good stories for both adults and children and why would you waste brain cells on a film that is literally just making poop joke after poop joke until it gets to a bittersweet ending?

What do you think of Hotel Transylvania?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding