Rating: What do pointless animated comedy sequels, Season 7 of long-running sitcoms and a failing marriage all have in common? When the writing's on the wall, they'll all plump for the same answer - introduce a baby. Hotel Transylvania 2 can only last five minutes before Dracula's daughter pops out a sprog, and it only manages that long by indulging in needless undermining of the rather harmonious ending of the original (read: the main character learning a life-changing lesson and everyone has a silly dance number). Yup, it's one of those films. We've been spoilt recently by animated sequels - Toy Story, How To Train Your Dragon and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs all had follow ups that expanded on (and in the former two cases topped, their predecessors) - to the point that when the old type comes along it's a shock to the system; an ostensible cash-in with a only slight variation on the original plot where just enough high-jinks occur to pad-out the runtime. Now, Hotel Transylvania wasn't a great movie, but at least it had a clear story and the odd gag that worked (and remembered to put at least some focus on the "Hotel" part of the title); this one is just ninety minutes of bright colours and pratfalling with people you've met before but didn't really take that kindly to, which will only distract the youngest of viewers. Genndy Tartakovsky is someone who clearly loves what he's working on - there's an innate inference of wonder at the world of monsters - but is doing so regardless of if anyone else does (think John Lasseter with Cars 2). From my obsession with Star Wars I know he's a man really driven by passion (he was behind the wonderful 2D Clone Wars) and his heart is certainly in the right place, but watching this film is like seeing a vampire repeatedly trying to feed on someone with plastic anemia. Oddly enough, for once it's not totally fair to lay all the blame at the feet of Adam Sandler (whose Dracula is little more than an indistinct Eastern European voice). This is definitely him and his buddies (Kevin James, the otherwise great Andy Samberg) dicking about for cash, only in a recording booth instead of some exotic location, but there's not the same grubby finger marks all over this as with Pixels. Maybe it was studio pressures that forced Tartakovsky's hand, or maybe these characters are just too broadly conceived and lacking in depth to work outside of their original narrative. Regardless of reason, it's a bad film. What really grates is the confusing message. There's so many different character conflicts hastily brushed over that what exactly the film is trying to teach children is a monstrous task itself, but the most concise I could get it to is "Don't worry if you don't fit in, because you will eventually without even trying." Yeah, seriously - that's the big moral of all this. I think can just end the review here... Hotel Transylvania is in US cinemas now and will be released in the UK on 16th October.
