Ten Stars or Less

I don’t write “blah blah blah” in my movie reviews. Drac (Adam Sandler) is back from one more adventure with his crazy family and friends who run a hotel for monsters in Transylvania. After brushing off death, several hundred times, from Val Helsing (Jim Gaffigan), he will be tricked into falling in love with a cruise captain Ericka (Kathryn Hahn) who is also out to kill him. Sounds a little crazy because it is. The first two movies of this ever-growing franchise were above and beyond this one in terms of creativity and story telling. Each movie had a “bad guy” but this one was all about the bad guy and for a kids movie, he was pretty creepy and evil. The Van Helsing character was by far my least favorite part of the movie, along with the Ericka character. Also, the movie has this epic show down between good and evil music, which turns into a dance off to lure an evil sea monster back to the good side. If you hadn’t taken a mental check out by that point, you may be really disappointed with the way everything turns out at the end of the music sequence. I spent the majority of the movie rooting for Drac to come to his senses and not fall for the traps, but once someone zings, it’s game over. The highlights for me were parts and characters that I never warmed up to before, like Wayne (Steve Buscemi) and Wanda (Molly Shannon) doing dog things because they were finally free of the pack. Blobby (Genndy Tartakovsky) doing blobby things that are hilarious, along with Griffin (David Spade) who is always there but is never actually there. The best part of the entire movie was the introduction of the Gremlins and their shady airline procedures, which had me laughing out loud in a near empty movie theater. Of course I think of Gremlins from the movie Gremlins, but these funny green guys were the best part of the movie. In case you think this movie is the final chapter, I bet if this movie is even remotely successful ticket sales wise, we will embark on the next chapter of the journey between monsters and humans. I am just left to wonder what they may have in store for us next time. 5/10