Movie Review: Dracula (Sandler) is an overprotective single dad-cum-savvy hotelier who runs a tight ship, at both home and hearth. His clients are ghosts and ghouls alike, who come in from every corner of the earth.
Every classic major movie monster treats this Hogwarts-like palace like a home away from home and finds good ol’ Drac in the best spirits. To the untrained eye, this might look like a madhouse with all of monster-dom running amok in a confined space, but nothing is a problem for Dracula. Except for his only child, Mavis (Gomez).
Her 118th birthday (18th in human years) is just around the corner, she wants to go see the world and is far more optimistic about human nature than her father. In this unholy mix, comes a hitch-hiking human called Jonathan (Samberg). Drac would best have him thrown off the premises but with everyone (the lord of vampires included) taking a shine to the boy, who ends up masquerading as a distant cousin of Frankenstein (James), and Mavis falling for Jonathan, things get complicated.
The 3D animation is on par with the best in the business. The laughs come, though not thick and fast, and while some gags don’t really get the desired ‘zing’, it is the spirited acting by Sandler and Samberg and the effortlessly fluid animation that sees this film rise above the predictable script. Genndy, the film’s director and the name behind cartoons like Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack makes a confident feature debut with this film and guns for nostalgia (and a pining for the old-fashioned life).