Adam Sandler has become a real puzzle as of late. Although his “lovable dumb guy” shtick brought him massive commercial success in the mid to late ‘90s (post “Saturday Night Live), his output in the last decade has become fairly abysmal with bombs like “Jack and Jill” and “That’s My Boy”. Surprisingly, Sandler and company managed to craft a pretty delightful little tale about Count Dracula as a single father trying to raise his daughter Mavis while at the same time running a resort in his infamous hometown in “Hotel Transylvania”. A welcome surprise in 2012, it spawning an ever more commercially successful sequel in 2015, and now another sequel is upon us which finally gets Drac along with his friends and family out of the hotel and out into the great unknown as they board a cruise ship in “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation”.
Dracula (Sandler) is showing signs of work related stress, which does not go unnoticed by his doting daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez). After catching a rather hypnotic ad on television, Mavis books the entire crew on a cruise ship ported out of The Bermuda Triangle, where her father unexpectedly becomes smitten with the ship’s captain, Ericka (Kathryn Hahn). While the rest of the gang enjoy their time on board, Mavis immediately becomes suspicious of the Ericka, questioning both the captain’s motives as well as her true feelings for her father. While everybody else on board enjoys all the amenities the cruise has to offer, Dracula’s feelings for Ericka continue to deepen as does the mystery that Mavis begins to uncove that quickly develops into a menacing danger that could threaten to destroy them all.
I was incredibly enthusiastic about this film, but at the same time, cautiously optimistic. Most films that develop into a trilogy seem to run into their biggest slump by the time they hit their third chapter, and even though there are exceptions to this rule, they are relatively rare. Unfortunately for this franchise, the curse seems to be in effect here as I’m not sure if the novelty has worn off or the screenwriters have simply run out of ideas. Possibly both, but the point remains that this is easily the weakest of the series thus far, with jokes repeatedly fall flat and a story just isn’t very well developed or engaging. I really wanted to like this film since I was so pleasantly surprised by the first two films and genuinely enjoyed the universe they established. I don’t have very high hopes for a satisfying follow up to this film, and I can only dream that Director Genndy Tattakovsky will decide to move onto other things, like the “Popeye” remake he teased us all with a few years back.