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‘Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation’ Meets ‘The Love Boat’
By Sandra Olmsted
Although the film opens with the introduction of Dracula’s (voice of Adam Sandler) archenemy, Van Helsing (voice of Jim Gaffigan), Director Genndy Tartakovsky’s installment in this franchise explores Dracula’s discovery that he is lonely and needs to love and be loved. Unfortunately, he’s so woefully behind the times even a dating app on his phone can’t help him. Dracula’s daughter, Mavis (voice of Selena Gomez), overhears him lamenting that anyway “you only zing once” in your life; “zing” means love at first sight. She decides a family vacation on a cruise ship will show her dear old dad he can still have fun and meet new monsters.
After a flight on Gremlin Airlines, where passengers are free to move around the cabin during the descent, Dracula, Grandpa Vlad (voice of Mel Brooks), Mavis, her husband Johnny (voice of Andy Samberg) and son Dennis (voice of Asher Blinkoff), as well as the entire bunch of friends from Hotel Transylvania, arrive at the Bermuda Triangle to board their cruise ship for Atlantis. When Captain Ericka (voice of Kathryn Hahn) addresses her guests, Dracula zings and develops goofy smile reminiscent of the animation style in the Charlie Brown specials. Because he hasn’t zinged in a hundred years, Dracula can’t speak to Ericka without babbling incoherently.
Meanwhile, Ericka slinks off to the depths of the ship and reveals a lair where her Grandfather Van Helsing urges her not to abandon their plan to rid the world of monsters, one cruise shipful at a time. Because it has been over a hundred years since he last confronted Dracula, Van Helsing transformed himself into a Steam Punk cyborg to continue his vendetta against Dracula. Now, Van Helsing plans to raise the Kraken and make it attack the ship.
All the voice actors, including Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, Tara Strong, David Spade, Kevin James, and Keegan-Michael Key, who return as Dracula’s friends, provide the characters with real emotion and lives. Such good voice acting, which is recorded before animation begins, provides the animators with a solid foundation to work with and results in humor, emotion, and realism that infuses Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation with life. Although this animated film is primarily aimed at children, Tartakovsky and his team include plenty of humor for all ages so that parents and grandparents can be entertained as well. Also, the use of music as a key plot point provides another level of fun that may have you dancing in your seat. The script, which Tartakovsky co-wrote, has plenty of slapstick, excitement, and verbal jokes which require careful listening, and, although Tartakovsky rarely misses an opportunity for a joke or an opportunity to let one slapstick routine tumble into the next, he skips the obvious, such as “what happens in the Bermuda Triangle, stays in the Bermuda Triangle.”
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, a Columbia Pictures release, is rated PG for some action and rude humor and runs a fast-paced 97 minutes. Opening July 13, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation will provide a great escape from the July doldrums before the back-to-school rush begins.
