Review of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) by Kai82 — 28 Feb 2021

A rare case where the third movie in a franchise is really good. It is the more of the same approach with expanding of the lore, new characters atop on everything that makes the prequels good. I could end here with the statement “If you like the previous movies you will like this one too”.

I will instead go into details. The movie starts with a flashback long ago were the monster gang is on the run from Professor Abraham van Helsing who wants to kill them. Dracula however could always outsmart him and he stopped his attempts long ago.

Jump to the present and Dracula is a bit unsatisfying with his life. Everything is running by routine smoothly and it is unsatisfying. Would describe it as burn out or bore out if not even the equivalent of a midlife crisis (If there is a vampire equivalent for a midlife crisis).

Atop of this he is still suffering from the dead of his wife even if this happen long ago (he hides this). His family wants to lighten his mood with a family holiday so his daughter Mavis books a cruise and the whole cast joins him.

He is not happy about this until he meets the female captain of the ship named Ericka. Meanwhile there is more to this than meets the eye. I stop with this introduction. The story itself fully delivers what you expect in an entertaining way.

The story is interesting, the humor works well, old and new characters are enjoyable and the climax is just amazing. I freely admit that it is not the most creative animated movie nor in the realm of the best of the best.

However it does not need to be there. It is humorous and entertaining with a cast I care for. This is a good description for a movie that works well. Again we have the whole team of great voice actors with Adam Sandler (works here far better than in his later movies), Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Andy Samberg, David Spade, Frank Drescher and Mel Brooks to just name a few.

They again fully deliver and the cast is as enjoyable as humorous. For the new characters we got Kathryn Hahn as Ericka who I enjoyed already in Crossing Jordan (Recommend the show), Jim Gaffigan as excellent Professor van Helsing and Joe Jonas in a role I wont spoil.

Like in the prequel the new characters are a good addition to the cast and franchise. The animations are again excellent and I repeat myself that the art style is one of my favorites. It blends in so well with the voice actors.

For the first time for this franchise I also praise the soundtrack as they made an amazing use of its potential (I am vague on purpose here but you will know what I mean). Overall this was surprisingly well done.

The third movie is in many cases a catastrophe like Alien 3 and Godfather 3 or the weakest so far like Terminator 3. Here they gave us something that succeeds in being the same we enjoyed but still fresh enough to work.

The humor in conjunction with the awesome final gets a bonus point for my rating. I recommend all movies in the franchise so far and hope that the next movie will come out soon.