Hotel Transylvania (2012)

Almost without exception, I would consider Adam Sandler to be the life force that can suck the joy and competence out of any film he touches, a sad reality when you consider how genuinely funny he could be in his sketch comedy days on "Saturday Night Live." But I never thought that would extend to movies that just contain Sandler's voice.

Alas, his voice and his behind-the-scenes work as producer are enough to throw the animated "Hotel Transylvania" directly into the cinematic circular file. Co-written by "SNL" collaborator Robert Smigel and directed by TV animation veteran Genndy Tartakovsy, "Hotel Transylvania" takes a fairly clever idea and a far better than average vocal cast and generates 90 minutes of spastic movement swirling around recycled ideas.

To put it another way, I found the film so unmemorable that I struggle now to recap it for you. But I'll take a shot at it...

Dracula (Sandler) is left to raise his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez, a Disney star swap-out for the originally cast Miley Cryus) alone after the death of his wife at the hands of humans. Vowing to protect Mavis, he has a giant castle of a hotel built in Transylvania where monsters and creatures of every type and variety will be welcomed in their travels and feel safe from human interaction and danger.

Mavis, in a storyline highly derivative of everything from Rapunzel to this summer's "Brave," wishes to see some of the world and whenever her birthday comes around, her hopes are repeatedly crushed by her father. That is until her 118th birthday, when Dracula relents. But unbeknownst to Mavis, her first experience in the human world is nothing more than a hoax, elaborately staged by her father with the help of local zombies (playing humans, naturally) to guarantee that she will no longer desire to leave the hotel.

This plan seems to work until the inevitable human infiltrates the many barriers set up to keep him away from the castle. Dracula is immediately aware that the jam band-loving, slacker-y Jonathan (Andy Samberg) is in fact a human, and explodes into panic as he attempts to remove Jonathan from the hotel, or at least disguise him from the other monsters. But in a plot twist I doubt anyone wouldn't see coming, Jonathan bumps into Mavis and the two are, like, waaay into each other, man.

Thus a father must come to terms with his daughter loving a being of another species and his Marlon-in-"Finding Nemo"-like obsessiveness with controlling his child's every move. And one human is able to cause the slightest nudge in the monsters' perception of humans as creature-killer-terrorists.

The fact that "Hotel Transylvania" is little more than a half dozen preexisting animated film story plots (all originally told better) dressed up in Halloween costumes is simply unavoidable. While it certainly matters little to kids, there is not a single new idea or message in this film once you get beyond its morose and actually quite dramatic and interesting premise. Indeed, the film's few decent moments are explorations of Dracula's great loss and fears of suffering further loss. And a touching late-act scene in which Dracula and a few of his comrades realize just how accepted they can be in the human world has real-world resonance that is highly current. Sadly, these moments of promise are as fleeting as a ghost through one of the hotel's hallways.

Classic Universal horror film characters such as the Frankenstein monster, Mummy and Werewolf appear here in mutated forms in supporting roles energetically voiced by Kevin James, CeeLo Green and Steve Buscemi respectively, and they keep kids entertained with their antics. Joining them are a host of "SNL" alums from Jon Lovitz to Molly Shannon. But with nothing fresh to work with in terms of material, there is little pleasure in hearing what their voices can do.

In addition, the animation itself is lackluster. Earlier this year, I strongly disliked the big screen version of "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax," but at least while doing so, I was delighted by the vivid colors and wonderful animation. "Hotel Transylvania" was unable to satisfy me even on this level. For a film so long in development, how could Sony's animation division put out something so uninspired, so visibly rudimentary and rushed?

My kids really enjoyed "Hotel Transylvania," and I bear no ill will toward anyone of their age who has a blast watching a monster movie in such a unique position to take the abject terror out of some of film's most notoriously scary monsters; even the child of weakest wills can laugh free of fear in this picture. But no one over elementary school age has any excuse to enjoy "Hotel Transylvania." That is, unless they've never seen another animated film before.

Ultimately, I did find myself in alignment with "Hotel Transylvania" on one issue, a thought that came to me about a third of the way in and never left me. Just like any human trapped in a monster hotel would say, I found myself whispering: "Get me out of here!"

0.5 out of 4