Review: "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"

An interesting idea that turned into a rehashed sequel that now is a bona fide animation franchise desperately in need of a stake through its cold, black heart, “Hotel Transylvania” is the undead visitor that arrives every third year for an unwanted visit, thrilling your kids but leaving you groaning.

Or, slumbering: I fell asleep during the screening. Several times. Not for long, I think, but propriety requires that I disclose this is a review of only about 96% of the movie.

You know the setup: Dracula (voice of Adam Sandler) has traded in blood-sucking for running a posh hotel for monsters, who have come out of the darkness to live (mostly) in harmony with humans. To wit: his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) has married goofy human Jonathan (Andy Samberg) and produced a half-vampire grandson, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff).

Tagging along are buds Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi), Murray the mummy (Keegan-Michael Key), and Griffin the invisible man (David Spade).

Things are pretty hectic running a hotel and watching over a passel of monsters, who come in sorts of shapes, colors and sizes. So Mavis decides the family needs a vacation aboard the Legacy, an ocean liner catering to their kind. Stops include an underwater volcano and Atlantis, which has risen from the sea in the form of a tawdry waterlogged version of Las Vegas.

Dracula soon finds himself directing his killer gaze at Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), the human captain of the ship. He’s been a widower for more than a century, but is surprised to find he can still “zing” -- the monster term for falling instantly in love.

But Ericka has some not-nice hidden motives, which are demonstrated by suddenly scowling while her face is underlit with red light that appears from nowhere to let you know she’s thinking evil thoughts.

Mel Brooks plays Drac’s dad Vlad, an old-schooler who eventually came around on not biting people. He gets some of the film’s best laughs strutting around in a tiny bathing suit, proudly flaunting his 500-year-old body. The gaggle of witches are appreciative, though.

The heavy is Van Helsing, Dracula’s old nemesis who is still kept alive through a steampunk contraption that animates his head and hands, along with a few struggling organs in jars. He’s voiced by Jim Gaffigan, doing his best impression of Bill Hader.

There’s a lot of colors, and boingy action, and spontaneous dancing. They even revive a couple of tunes from the last movie; I guess the filmmakers didn’t want to shell out for another songwriter. There’s even a DJ contest late in the game where they dust off “Macarena” as the epitome of all that is good and positive. Well.

Kids will probably enjoy “Transylvania 3,” but for anyone over the age of 10 it’s a sack of garlic, a beam of sunshine and a wooden cross all rolled into one.

Review: "Storks"

“Storks” is a better concept than final product. It’s middle-of-the-road animation for kiddies with some humor thrown in for adults that doesn’t really click. I guess we should appreciate the effort, but whether they tried to include us or not, we’re not laughing.

The setup is that storks actually were in the baby delivering business until 18 years ago, when a colossal screw-up left them in the lurch and they had to take on a lost infant themselves, who’s grown up into an annoying teen who screws everything up. The boss stork, Hunter (voice of Kelsey Grammer), came up with the idea of transforming them into Cornerstore.com, an Amazon-like outlet for all kinds of consumer junk delivered door-to-door via free bird.

(Right now somewhere, Jeff Bezos is cursing his army of expensive drones.)

Hunter’s ready to move up the chain and hand the business off to Junior (Andy Samberg), a neurotic yet ambitious young climber. Except Nate (Anton Starkman), a lonely human kid who wants a baby brother to play with, sends a letter off to the storks requesting same. (“Please include ninja skills,” he underlines.) And Tulip (Katie Crown), the storks’ pet orphan, accidentally feeds it into their dormant giant gizmo that turns the letter molecules into the DNA of a new baby, or something. Out spits an adorable tyke with cotton candy-colored hair.

The metaphysics don’t make a lick of sense, but just go with it.

…except I can’t. Leaving aside the stationary-into-infant-humans thing, does this mean people weren’t having sex prior to the storks abandoning their trade? And now they’ve been making babies the old-fashioned way? If that’s the case, I’d think the headlines wouldn’t read “Storks back to making babies” but rather “Evil birds out to ruin your sex life!”

Anyway, Junior and Tulip embark on a trip to return the little girl to her rightful place, which involves journeying across sky, land and sea. (Junior conveniently busts his wing right before, thus removing the “Why not just take the eagles to Mordor?” argument a la the “Lord of the Rings” movies.)

Along the way they encounter a wolf pack that first wants to eat, then adopt the baby for themselves. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele voice the alpha dogs. The wolves have the curious, but genuinely hilarious, ability to link their bodies together to form a bridge, a boat and more stuff. There’s also a nasty little pigeon toadie (Stephen Kramer Glickman) looking to deep-six Junior’s favored status.

The movie keeps cutting away to Nate’s house, where he manages to pry his workaholic realtor parents (Jennifer Aniston and Ty Burrell) away from their phone headsets long enough to get some overdue bonding in.

Nicholas Stoller, who wrote the screenplay and co-directed with Doug Sweetland, has a fondness for rapid-delivery dialogue that is reminiscent of classic screwball comedies. Except they overuse it to the extent it becomes just irritating. It’s almost like theyassumeverythingbecomesfunnierjustbecauseyousayitfast.

If there’s a point to the story, it’s that kids are great, and you should have kids, and hug them lots and spend time with them. I can think of better ways to accomplish that than taking them to “Storks.”

Anyway, that’s my review. Now here’s one from Joel Lloyd, age almost 6: “Omigaw I love this movie!! I liked the part where the machine made a million babies with rainbow hair. Can we get it on DVD for Christmas??”

Review: "Hotel Transylvania 2"

The first "Hotel Transylvania" was an uninspired amalgam of other movies, stitching together the current cinematic fascination with vampires, zombies and the like with angsty teen imperatives. The sequel is a distinct improvement, though curiously almost none of it takes place in the titular hotel.

The last go-round was about Dracula (Adam Sandler, sounding like a Borscht Belt Bela Lugosi) learning to find tolerance for humans when his teen daughter -- well, hundred-and-teens, anyway -- Mavis (Selena Gomez) fell in love with goofy human Jonathan (Andy Samberg).

Flash forward a few years. Mavis and Jonathan are now happily wed and have an adorable tyke, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff). Drac is thoroughly delighted with his grandson ... though he's a little worried that he has yet to indicate any vampire-ish abilities. He seems to be a carbon copy of Jonathan: big poof of red hair, pasty skin, normal, non-sharp incisors, etc.

"He's just a late fanger," Dracula dismisses, though he's secretly worried the kid is really all human. And how disappointing would that be!

Mavis is considering moving their family to Santa Cruz to raise him alongside Jonathan's parents (chirpy Molly Shannon and droll Nick Offerman) and other regular humans. Drac can't stand the idea of being apart from them, so while they're away scouting out the potential new hometown, he and his crew whip up a plan for a road trip to encourage Dennis' monsterish side to come out.

Hijinks ensue, of the lightly scary/slightly vulgar variety.

The gang of supporting characters are back, including Steve Buscemi as a werewolf hectored by his wolf-wife and small army of pups; Frankenstein (Kevin James), big and blandly nice; a fabulous mummy (Keegan-Michael Key); and an invisible man (David Spade), who keeps trying to convince his buddies he has an invisible girlfriend.

The new guy on the block is Dracula's daddy, Vlad, wonderfully voiced by Mel Brooks. He's an old-school type who keeps the fires of hate toward humans well-stoked, and he's got a crew of giant vampire bat henchman to do his bidding. Drac takes steps to ensure Vlad doesn't find out his great-grandkid isn't a bloodsucker.

Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky with a screenplay by Sandler and buddy Robert Smigel, "Hotel Transylvania 2" won't win any contests for originality. It's television-quality storytelling with better animation and voice cast.

But it's breezy, fun and dopey, and sure to keep your little monsters entertained for an hour and a half.

Review: "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2"

I didn't much care for the first "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," and the sequel is no improvement. The characters are flat, the story is unimaginative, and the humor is aimed straight at the pre-kindergarten crowd. If it weren't for the terrific animation and amazing creature designs, it would have nothing to recommend.

For those who don't remember the last flick: never-do-well inventor Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) invented a machine that could spontaneously produce food out of water. Of course, it went berserk and began raining down house-sized cheeseburgers and pizza on his island home town. Flint and a crew of unlikely pals eventually shut it down.

The sequel picks up right where we left off, with the folks celebrating even as their dwellings are uninhabitable. Cue the arrival of Chester V (Will Forte), Flint's childhood hero, a scientist who creates all sorts of neat stuff while exuding a sense of superior cool. He's the best thing about the movie, with his weird body that has the rubbery quality of a yoga master and the studied mannerisms of Steve Jobs.

Chester's company, LIVE Corp., is a not-at-all disguised spoof of Apple. They offer to relocate the people of the town while things are tidied up. Meanwhile, Flint is enticed with a job offer, including the potential to join the ranks of the Thinkonauts -- Chester's geek elite.

But, wouldn't you know, it turns out Flint's food machine is still cranking out exotic eats, so he's recruited to go back and set things right.

Joining him out a sense of camaraderie are meteorologist/girlfriend Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), grumpy beetle-browed dad (James Caan), bully-turned-doofus-sidekick Brent (Andy Samberg), doctor/videographer Manny (Benjamin Bratt), police officer/acrobat Earl (Terry Crews) and Steve (Neil Patrick Harris), Flint's monkey assistant. New to the crew is Barb (Kristen Schaal), Chester's pushy orangutan assistant.

Things get interesting when they arrive on the island, where it turns out the food is not only still getting cranked out, it's actually taken on sentient animal form. So Flint and friends are chased by a cheeseburger spider (much scarier than it sounds) and buddy up with a walking, talking strawberry.

I just loved the huge menagerie of critters the filmmakers came up with -- it's a real feast for the eyes. There are hippos that resemble potatoes, leek brontosaurus, a taco tyrannosaur, "shrimpanzees," and a whole lot more.

I just wish co-directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn, and screenwriters John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein and Erica Rivinoja, could've come up with a story and characters to match the excellent visuals. The people struggle to qualify as one-dimensional, since they each have exactly one defining characteristic.

As for the 3-D, I would advise you to skip the upcharge -- the special effects really aren't special enough that you need to see them splayed out across your field of vision.

My almost-3-year-old seemed reasonably engaged throughout the movie, but rarely laughed out loud or started chattering or clapping excitedly. "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2" is competent, nice-looking entertainment for little ones that will soon be forgotten, and deserves to be.

Review: "The To Do List"

I wish Aubrey Plaza had made this movie a few years ago when she was just starting out as the acerbic April on TV's "Parks and Recreation." It's a classic transitionary role perfect for a new star, playing a high school goody-goody on a mission to lose her virginity before college.

When you're 23 or 24 playing 17 or 18 is a stretch, but still doable. Plaza is 29, so when they put her in the right clothes and makeup she looks exactly like ... someone pushing 30 playing a teen.
I also wish "The To Do List" was just plain better than it is.

It's part of the chicks-can-do-raunch-too movement, of which I am fully supportive. Comediennes have grown tired of their male counterparts eating up all the sex-and-cursing bandwidth, and have launched their own front with "Bridesmaids" and the like.

Written and directed by Maggie Carey, "List" certainly doesn't shy away from the dirty talk, though depictions of sex acts are more coy than flagrant.

The setup is that class of '93 valedictorian Brandy Klark is a total grind who's deliberately ignorant of even the basics of sex. Sister Amber (Rachel Bilson) is a party girl and her parents (Clark Gregg and Connie Britton) are pretty buttoned up, so she determines to achieve her deflowering before summer's end, as sort of a rite-of-passage meets science project.

Brandy being the methodical brainy sort, she researches sex acts and makes a comprehensive list of everything she wants to do. We've seen gosh knows how many sex comedies in which young lads determine to lose their cherry. But Brandy's list looks more like the chapter titles on a porn DVD.

She even has her sights set on the ultimate prize: going all the way with Rusty Waters (Scott Porter), a dude-ish older guy who works at the same pool where she does during the summer. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is Cameron (Johnny Simmons), a nerdy classmate and longtime pal who'd like to be more than the warm-up act for Rusty.

Bill Hader plays Willy, the slacker pool manager who's both her boss and chief teaser; Andy Samberg is a rocker and potential checkmark on Brandy's list; Donald Glover and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play hangers-on and hopefuls.

The primary other relationships in the story are with Brandy's best buds, Wendy (Sarah Steele) and Fiona (Alia Shawkat). I liked the foul-mouthed repartee between the trio, which combines hardcore sex talk with a certain sweetness. They all call each other "Pancake" while discussing the intimate details of their sexual encounters.

The main problem with "The To Do List" is that it's structured like a series of skits rather than a cohesive narrative. The characters are merely props for the jokes. Plaza tries hard to find the neurotic center of Brandy, but it's tough when the script calls for her to be brazen one minute and a wallflower the next.

There are some individually funny scenes and throwaway jokes -- make sure to check out the graffiti that gets sprayed all over the pool house by a rival gang. And there's one instant classic bit where Plaza pulls off a water joke that's ... well, let's just call it a reverse "Caddyshack."

I think Aubrey Plaza has serious potential as a comedic lead actress, but this movie feels like a stumble. If you want to see her in something infinitely more clever and less bawdy, check out last year's "Safety Not Guaranteed." That little-seen gem should be on everyone's to-do list.

Video review: "Hotel Transylvania"

Even in an extraordinarily weak year for animation, “Hotel Transylvania” did not receive an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature. And it’s no surprise: this derivative monster tale featuring Adam Sandler is a Frankenstein-like assemblage of bits ‘n’ pieces from other movies.

Actually, Frankenstein himself is here (voiced by Kevin James), along with Dracula (Sandler), the Wolfman (Steve Buscemi), the Mummy (CeeLo Green) and a rogues’ gallery of every other creature feature from the past 80 years. The set-up is that they’ve all come to the hotel for their once-a-year celebratory bash, centered around the birthday of Dracula’s daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez).

Mavis is in her rebellious teenage phase -- it happens around age 118 for vampires -- and wants to venture forth and see the world. But Drac and the rest of the gruesome crew say it’s too dangerous, what with all the humans out there with their torches, pitchforks and paranoia. Then the red-blooded problem arrives on their doorstep in the form of Jonathan (Andy Samberg), a dim-witted backpacker dude. Dracula dresses him up as a Frankenstein cousin, and door-slamming farce ensues.

The animation is truly wonderful, a cartoony (non-scary) take on the nightmarish creatures of legend. I loved how the Wolfman wears a short-sleeved shirt and tie like a middle manager on holiday, and Frankenstein has a tendency to lose his stitching and fall to pieces.

But the story plays out with all the predictability of a werewolf needing a haircut on a full moon. Jonathan and Mavis start making gooey eyes at each other, dear dead dad isn’t very happy about it, and the scary humans turn out to be not so scary after all.

The animators did their job creating a visually vibrant world, but the script has all the life of a vampire with a stake through its heart.

Video extras are decent without being extravagant. The DVD comes with deleted scenes, feature-length commentary, music video and a short film, “Goodnight Mr. Foot.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you get three making-of documentaries covering the voice cast and animation process.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Hotel Transylvania"

Monsters as heroes is a pretty popular theme in pop culture. Vampires are more likely to be dreamy lovers than smelly undead bloodsuckers these days. And long before "Twilight" and its ilk, Tim Burton made the ghoulish seem normal with "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Heck, "Sesame Street" took the word "monsters" and stood it on its head more than 40 years ago but using it to refer to cute fuzzy Muppets.

Maybe that's why "Hotel Transylvania" doesn't feel terribly original. The entire premise is based on the idea that werewolves, mummies, vampires, alien blobs and zombies are outcasts hiding out from the fearsome clutches of humans who want to destroy them. The eponymous inn is the place where they get to come once a year to hang out and party in safety.

Of course, if things are so bad out there, it begs the question of why they don't all just live in the hotel year round. But applying logic to a movie like this is like Dracula deciding he needs a tan.

Speaking of Dracula, he's voiced by Adam Sandler doing a sort of Borscht Belt version of the familiar Bela Lugosi accent. Here he's a single dad trying to run a business where the help consists of mindless zombie bellboys and haunted suits of armor. Meanwhile, he's raising a rebellious teen daughter -- as in 118 years old -- named Mavis (Selena Gomez).

She wants to go out into the world to see what there is to see, but Drac takes steps to convince her to stick around. After all, the big annual event on the monster calendar is her birthday, and he's invited all his friends and regular guests to celebrate.

The animators did a great job with the various creatures, giving them a cool cartoony look with exaggerated features. The target audience here is kids who count their age in single digits, so nothing's terribly scary. (The PG rating is mostly for a few moments involving gastrointestinal humor.)

If anything, director Genndy Tartakovsky, a TV veteran making his feature film debut, doesn't linger long enough on the monsters so we can appreciate all the little details. This movie often feels like it's being spurred on by hurry-up pacing.

I did like the way Frankenstein (Kevin James) is held together with flimsy stitches that are apt to give way, leaving him a collection of parts. Or the werewolf is named Wayne (Steve Buscemi) and resembles a hectored businessman with a pushy wife and rambunctious passel of pups.

Other notable cast members are a mummy (CeeLo Green) and Invisible Man (David Spade), who's rendered as a disembodied pair of glasses.

The fly in the ointment is Jonathan, an adventure-seeking young human (Andy Samberg) who stumbles upon the hotel while backpacking across Europe. Dracula makes him up to resemble a distant cousin of Frankenstein and introduces him as the party planner for Mavis, who soon is casting goo-goo eyes at him.

The whole thing devolves into a slamming-doors farce, with people chasing each other, stumbling into awkward situations, doing double-takes and spinning webs of lies that are soon found out.

Jonathan is about as endearing as Samberg's live-action losers, hyperfast-talking slackers who register somewhere between mentally challenged and just plain dim. I kept thinking what the movie would've been like without him. Better, certainly.

With its emphasis on boingy action and goofy comedy, "Hotel Transylvania" is meant to do little more than distract wee tykes for a little while, and for that demographic it might do the job. The adults accompanying them will just wonder how soon they can check out.

2 stars out of four

Review: "Celeste and Jesse Forever"

I really wanted to like "Celeste and Jesse Forever" more than I did. It's a smart, wryly funny dramedy about a divorcing couple who can't quite seem to let go. Rashida Jones is a revelation in it, playing as distinctly drawn a female character as we've seen in a while.

My disconnect is that it's supposed to be the story of two people, when really it's about Celeste. Jesse is certainly in the picture, but his role is more to hold up the frame and let the audience gaze at her. We never get into his head the way we do Celeste's.

Given that this is a pet project of Jones -- she also is a producer and co-wrote the screenplay with Will McCormack -- it's not surprising that the light shines mostly on her. But the imbalanced nature of the way they're presented leaves us with a film that feels only partially complete.

Late in the story, Jesse complains to Celeste that she never saw him as an equal in their relationship. The same can be said for the movie.

Things aren't helped by Andy Samberg's lackluster performance as Jesse. A goofy actor from "Saturday Night Live" and several film comedies, Samberg simply doesn't have the acting chops to pull off something like this, with aspirations toward depth and complexity. He reads his lines as if he's searching for the hidden joke inside.

Although there are plenty of funny moments in the film, its essence veers more toward the somber than the profane. Samberg's presence makes the material seem more lightweight than it wants to be.

The story opens with a typical evening of the pair hanging out, cracking jokes and generally fitting together like hand in glove. These are the rare lovers who are also best friends. Except, at the end of their reverie, we learn they split up six months ago, and divorce proceedings are underway.

Certainly their friends have difficulty grasping the notion. They tell the couple they're just putting off the pain, but Jesse and Celeste insist their friendship will outlive their breakup. That seems a possibility, until they start getting interested in other people and sparks of friction begin flying.

Celeste is the more ambitious of the pair, a professional "trend forecaster" who's co-founder of a successful marketing firm. Elijah Wood has a neat little turn as her partner, who keeps making lame attempts to play the role of the catty gay pal, except he's too much of a business type to be convincing.

Meanwhile, Jesse is a failed artist who's never had a real job or even a checking account. Without it being said directly (at least initially), it would seem their breakup was initiated by doubts about Jesse's fitness to be a father, both hers and his.

The movie, directed by Lee Toland Krieger, is at its best when it's not trying to do too much. The story has a loose, easygoing feel and the characters interact the way real people do (or at least they way we'd like to think we do).

Most every person we meet turns out to be a little more nuanced than our first impression. For instance, Celeste's firm takes on a Ke$ha-like singer as a client, the sort of shallow pop songstress she despises, and finds out there's more to the young woman (Emma Roberts) than she thought. Or the slick business guy (Chris Messina) who tries to pick her up at yoga class.

"Celeste and Jesse Forever" is still a worthy movie, even if it's really more about one-half of a breakup than a whole.

2.5 stars out of four