Review of Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) by Kai82 — 26 Feb 2021

A solid sequel and I can make the standard statement „Not as good as the prequel but still worth watching“. It continues seven years after the prequel. The world is aware and not afraid of the existence of monsters as they are more treated like celebrities.

Mavis and Johnny are happily married and have a son named Dennis. Dennis has not shown yet any signs of his vampire heritage and his parents think about raising him in human company instead because it is dangerous for him with the monsters (Not by ill will or malice more by accidents or oversight).

For Dracula this is disturbing and he wants Dennis to use or learn to activate his vampiric abilities as his next birthday in a few days is a crucial one. If he cant channel his abilities until then it will not be possible to archive them later by any normal means.

This is a set up for the movie. The story impresses me. While it feels not as refreshing they tried something new atop of the established old. They could have played it safe but chose to add something.

A good mixture of old and new. Again they archive good humor with more serious themes while avoiding both harming the other. They deal with some serious stuff here and succeed for most parts. I will admit however that it works less well than in the previous movie and is in a few scenes borderline for me.

However the final act and conclusion are excellent and improved my rating. The great cast of voice actors return for their roles with Adam Sandler who works well here, Fran Drescher, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Andy Samberg and David Spade.

All resume the roles and fully deliver a great performance. For the Newcomers we have Asher Blinkhol as Dennis and the legend himself Mel Brooks as someone I will not spoil. Also we meet Johnny's family who fits in nicely but made some mistakes (The one that are born out of best intentions but mixed with misconception).

The Animations have improved as to be expected. I repeat that the style is excellent and is more fitting than a more realistic approach would be. The animations mix perfect with the voice acting and you never doubt the characters.

The director Genndy Tartakovsky delivers again and cements the statement that he is the real asset of Sony animations. Overall this is a good animated movie. We enjoyed it and wanted more movies in the franchise.

It delivers while being weaker than the prequel which is normal. I recommend the entire trilogy so far (Maybe quadrilogy as part 4 is announced but I have no details yet).