Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022) - Movie Review

After the third film managed to bring everything full circle, I was quite certain that that would be the end of the Hotel Transylvania movies. And I don’t say that out of some sense of relief or anything like that; I’ve been a fan of this series since the first film, and beyond their fantastic and consistent animation style, I think they do well with their re-examination of the old-school Universal monsters and what it means to be Othered. As such, when this for-realsies finale snuck its way onto Amazon Prime all the way back in January of this year, I was a bit taken aback but willing to give it an honest shot. And what I got was… well, it’s still fun, but for the supposed finale, it’s also unequivocally the most lightweight of all these films.

All of the voice cast from Summer Vacation have returned here… save for two. One of them is Kevin James as Frankenstein, who has been replaced by Brad Abrell. Considering he’s mainly been relegated to making duck faces in every other scene, it’s not that noticeable in the end product. What is is the absence of Adam Sandler as Dracula, played here by impressionist Brian Hull… and yeah, it’s more than a little obvious that this is the work of an impressionist. With how regularly mocked he’s been over the decades, I have likely heard hundreds of different impressions of Sandler’s Billy Madison vocal delivery before, so you’d think it’d be easy enough to imitate. But here, it feels like an impression of one of those other impressions, which saps what little drama there is in Dracula’s sudden metamorphosis.

Speaking of which, as the premise for a finale, I actually like the idea here of having all the Drac Pack monsters becoming human, while Jonathan becomes a monster; it feels like a good place to end the series’ regular musings on the relationship between humans and monsters. Now, the actual impetus for the change happening, which involves yet another instance of Drac trying (and failing) to cover his own mistakes, feels rather forced, especially since it involves walking back a fair bit of the development he’s already gone through in the past three films. Not only that, but the film itself is only 77 minutes before the end credits, and even that seems too long for the plot given here. Drac and Jonathan have to go to South America to find some MacGuffin crystal that will turn everyone back; it’s a TV episode at best.

However, while the writing is certainly thin, and Genndy Tartakovsky is strictly in a writing/producing role this time around (leaving out his strong suit as a director), it thankfully maintains the animation pedigree that has made these films as fun as they’ve been up to this point. It’s still aiming to look and feel like a 3D Tex Avery cartoon, and between the hyperactive and zippy character movements and the cool set pieces (I particularly like the bit where everyone teams up to protect Mavis from the sun), it succeeds. It admittedly doesn’t do as much as it could’ve with the new character designs (save for a lot of jokes about the Invisible Man’s now-visible butt), but even as humans, everyone maintains the same manic energy as before.

As the conclusion to this franchise (although with how it concludes, it’s likely raring up for a more traditional 2D TV show continuation), I’ll admit that this is a bit lacklustre. The plot is incredibly uninvolved, and all the appreciated thematic touches that have gotten me to properly defend this series up to now are sorely missed here. A short analogy involving campfire marshmallows just doesn’t cut it, and I will argue with anyone who claims that the other films never got any deeper than that. But, even with that said, it’s still quite fun as just another standard iteration of Hotel Transylvania’s approach to 3D animation, and as a fan of the series up to this point, I liked it.