Hotel Transylvania: Transformania Parent Guide

Feeling unaccepted by his father-in-law, Dracula (Brian Hull), human Johnny (Andy Samberg) expresses a wish to become a monster so that he can fit in with the family. Conveniently, Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) has just what Johnny’s looking for: a device that can turn a human into a monster or a monster into a human. But when the device goes awry, Drac and his friends are all turned into humans, and Johnny’s new monster form comes with some unintended dangers. Desperate to return to their usual selves, the whole group set out for South America, which holds their only hope for a cure.

I maintain that the first two movies in the Hotel Transylvania franchise are pretty good. Not outstanding, but perfectly watchable and mildly entertaining. I found the third film to be lacking, and unfortunately the downward trend continues with this fourth installment. By far the weakest film of the bunch, Transformania lacks the cleverness and heart of the past, and instead uses an unrelenting frenetic pace to trick viewers into thinking they’re being entertained.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Adam Sandler. He and Kevin James (who voiced Frank in the past) both chose to not return to their roles and the movie suffers for it. It’s less noticeable with Frank, but Drac feels like he’s missing something. Brian Hull is a good soundalike to Sandler, and his voice acting is perfectly fine, but there’s some unexplainable quality that the character lacks with his new voice actor. Did I ever think I’d be saying that a film needs more Adam Sandler? Absolutely not, but here we are.

As often happens with long running franchises, many of the characters forget their lessons from previous movies, reverting to their past mistakes and faults. Even worse, some of the characters have become flat caricatures with only one or two attributes in order to make the plot work. Johnny is no longer a lovable doofus, instead he is annoying and stupid, with the energy of a two year old on a constant diet of Red Bull. The movie itself has similar manic energy, as it moves from gag to gag with no breathing room in between. Perhaps this was a move to cater to young audiences with short attention spans, but it left me feeling like I just got home from the gym.

Aside from cartoony slapstick violence and a gag about the Invisible Man being naked all the time, there’s not much negative content to speak of. Similarly, there aren’t many strong positive messages to mention either. As with the entire franchise, there are some themes around acceptance, and there’s a nice bit about positivity, but they feel shoehorned in around all the wild action and slapstick antics. Young fans of the franchise will probably be entertained, but adults might want to sit this one out.