Whipping up another batch of goofy, family-friendly fun from some of cinema’s favourite monsters, Hotel Transylvania 2, the sequel to 2012’s hit animated comedy, finds Adam Sandler’s Count Dracula fretting that his new half-human grandson – offspring of his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and her flaky American slacker husband Johnny (Andy Samberg) – won’t turn out to be a vampire. Cue a barrage of slapstick silliness as Dracula exposes the toddler to a series of madcap perils, hoping this will jolt him into producing fangs before he crucially turns five.
There are some nice gags along the way (the Invisible Man pretending to have an Invisible Girlfriend is a clever touch), but Dracula’s monster chums, such as Steve Buscemi’s werewolf Wayne and Kevin James’s big-hearted lug of a Frankenstein, don’t really have enough to do and the story does feel stretched. All the same, this is so much more enjoyable than any of Sandler’s recent live-action movies.
Certificate U. Runtime 89. Director Genndy Tartakovsky
Hotel Transylvania 2 is available on Digital HD, DVD, Blu-ray & Blu-ray 3D from Sony Pictures Home Entertaiment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i73c3dgGxRQ
