Review of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) by Filipeneto — 26 Jun 2020

This is the third “Hotel Transylvania” film, an animation franchise that has been doing very well to Sony Pictures Animation. It lived up to expectations and stood out in quality with the previous two films. It is a noisy fast paced film that leaves the audience little time to think about what they are watching.

In this film, the monsters leave their isolated hotel and go on a cruise, so that old Count Dracula can finally take a vacation and forget about managing his hotel. At the same time, the vampire seeks a new girlfriend, despite not being able to admit it to Mavis, and is delighted with the ship's commander, Ericka. However, she hides a secret: she is the great-granddaughter of the Count's greatest enemy, the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing.

Its not a perfect film but it fits into the franchise and maintains the logical sequence of the previous films. For that, I am sure, it helped a lot the fact of maintaining the same voice actors and director, who also ensures the script writing here. Like the first and second films, love - the "Zing" - is the main theme, and that not only seems coherent but its perfectly suited to a family film. Dialogues are good and the jokes are naive but very clever. They won't make you laugh out loud, but they guarantee a good mood.

Although the story told is generally good, it is very predictable and obvious, and this can alienate or displease adults. The ending is even worse, as it is excessively sugary, that kind of happy ending where everything goes well, everyone is happy and love is in the air. Another problem is the lack of development of the characters due to the enormous amount of characters in a constantly overpopulated film. We literally go with the crowd. A lot of characters, such as the Invisible Man or the Mummy, was there only for the jokes and comic moments. Others are dismissed, disappear. This is the case of the werewolves, who are literally put to sleep for most of the film.

The work of the voice actors remains excellent, and something else could not be expected after two films with the cast core intact. Personally, I would like to highlight the good work of Adam Sandler, an actor who is not easy for me to like but who has an excellent voice and knows perfectly how to use it. After a second film where things did not went well, Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg returned to their good shape, which is due to better use of their characters. Kathryn Hahn was up to the challenge with a cheerful voice that fits her character, Jim Gaffigan was a good choice for the villain and I loved Chris Parnell's voice as Fish. In addition to these highlights, the film has, as usual, the good work of Steve Buscemi (although his character had little relevance), David Spade, Kevin James and Fran Drescher.

Technically, it is a high quality computer animated film. The overall design and quality of the animation is more detailed than in the previous film, but good CGI is something we get used to in modern animations and which has become the standard and a feature demanded by the audience. It has good light, good colours and contrast. There is no effort of exaggerated realism. The soundtrack was a strong bet in this film and we finally have a good selection of songs, most of which are already well known. Techno and trance music were signed by renowned DJ Tiësto, one of the strongest names in European electronic music.