journal features

movie review - Hotel Transylvania

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2017.01.23

By all accounts, Adam Sandler is a decent guy who treats people well and there's no denying that he's made his own path. But his life action stuff somehow leaves me cold, trying but failing to be really funny and just landing at clumsy and a bit cringey. This animated movie, about a vampire who has built a secluded hotel to live in self-imposed exile to hide himself and all manner of supernatural creatures from humanity. Humanity is accurately depicted as an irrational, clueless, and violent bunch of mistrustful thugs. He has his reasons (dead wife) but of course his teenage daughter is itching to go out and see the world despite the dangers.

When a human backpacker (see clueless above) turns up during an annual get-together, hilarity ensues. Or rather, Sandler's version of hilarity. It's strained, it's trite, it's OK for young children - my daughter, aged five, seemed engaged - but I didn't enjoy it.

Not recommended.

(I'm sure there will be eight sequels and spin-offs.)

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner