Hotel Transylvania

Hotel Transylvania is a 2012 American computer-animated monster comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation. The first installment in the Hotel Transylvania franchise, it was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (in his directorial debut) from a screenplay by Peter Baynham and Robert Smigel and a story by Todd Durham, Dan Hageman, and Kevin Hageman. The film stars the voices of Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, CeeLo Green, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Jon Lovitz, and Chris Parnell. The success of Hotel Transylvania launched a multimedia franchise and a series of three sequels, starting with Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015).

Plot
When monsters want to get away from it all, they go to Count Dracula's (Adam Sandler) Hotel Transylvania, a lavish resort where they can be themselves without humans around to bother them. On one special weekend, Dracula invites creatures like the Invisible Man, the Mummy and others to celebrate the 118th birthday of his daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez). However, an unforeseen complication unfolds when an ordinary human unwittingly crashes the party and falls in love with Mavis.

Why Even Monsters Need A Vacation

 * 1) A concept about a hotel for monsters is unique and interesting.
 * 2) Decent plot about a human ending up in a hotel meant for monsters and falling for the founder of said hotel's daughter while pretending to be a monster.
 * 3) This movie has the director, Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of Cartoon Network's Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory, and Sym-Bionic Titan, which did a great job for directing this film.
 * 4) Great humor.
 * 5) Nice animation which captures the look of Looney Tunes-esque cartoons. But still doesn't feel so ridiculously over-the-top and cartoony that it makes the movie gain and overall more immature tone that sucks out most of the emotion of the story.
 * 6) Great voice acting. The film also has an ensemble cast including Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, and CeeLo Green.
 * 7) Dracula's backstory was emotional. And explains why he hates humans so much (as a horde of angry humans killed his wife Martha when his daughter Mavis was just a baby).
 * 8) Adam Sandler was great and very funny as Dracula.
 * 9) Entertaining, funny and likable characters.
 * 10) *Dracula himself, the main protagonist of the film, was originally a stoic man who despised all humans due to losing his wife to them prior to the events of the film. But after discovering how a human like Johnny grew to genuinely love his own daughter, it causes him to realize that not all humans are bad people and it results in him letting go of his original hatred towards them.
 * 11) *Mavis, Dracula's daughter, is a curious young woman with a more idealistic view on the world than her father. As she seeks to go out into the outside world around her, in spite of her father's wishes against it due to the outside world being filled with humans, people he despised due to him losing his lover to them when Mavis was just an infant.
 * 12) *Johnny, while he doesn't have the same deep backstory or complex character arc as Dracula or Mavis, is still a funny comic relief character and feels like the "cool, hip character" archetype done really well. Not to mention how he plays a major part in Dracula's character development in learning to let go of his past and accept humans by seeing the love between him and his daughter Mavis.
 * 13) The soundtrack is really good.
 * 14) The word "zing" used as a romantic term is quite clever and also cool.
 * 15) Funny quotes such as "I do not say 'bleh, bleh, bleh'!".
 * 16) It features a clever take on that of the Twilight franchise.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) A few moments had toilet humor here and there, such as the scene with Frank farting in the lobby behind Murray. Although, toilet jokes are not the main focus of the story.
 * 2) The film uses some movie clichés, such as the "overprotective father" cliché, even if the film handles them well.
 * 3) *Speaking of clichés, it's not safe from getting the "liar revealed" cliché that everyone has seen numerous times, making the story predictable.
 * 4) Quasimodo Wilson (played by Jon Lovitz) doesn’t really have that much character development or screentime, making him the predicable and weak villain.

Reception
Even though the movie recieved mixed reviews from critics, it was well-received by audiences and has since become a cult film. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 44% of critics gave the film positive reviews; the average rating is 5.35/10, based on 144 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "Hotel Transylvania's buoyant, giddy tone may please children, but it might be a little too loud and thinly-scripted for older audiences". Another review aggregate, Metacritic, calculated an average score of 47 out of 100 based on 32 reviews. CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed that the average grade moviegoers gave Hotel Transylvania was an A- on an A+ to F scale. IMDb gave this film an 7.1/10, while the film has 3.1/5 score on Letterboxd.

Awards and nominations
It was nominated at Golden Globe award for the best-animated feature but lost to Brave.

Trivia

 * The development process ultimately went through six directors; in 2006, Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss became the first directors set to helm the film. They were replaced by Jill Culton in 2008, who was followed by Chris Jenkins, with Todd Wilderman in 2010.
 * In November 2011, Miley Cyrus was announced to voice Mavis, Dracula's teenaged daughter, but in February 2012, she was removed from the film. In August 2019, Cyrus admitted it was because of buying then-partner Liam Hemsworth a birthday cake in the shape of a penis and licking it. It was later announced that Selena Gomez would replace Cyrus.
 * In 2017, the franchise spawned a TV series for Disney Channel in USA and Teletoon in Canada with new voice actors starring in the series replacing the cast from the films as the recording moves from Hollywood, CA to Toronto, Canada while a third film to the franchise was in development. While that series is decent since it feels like a true prequel to this movie, it has some of its hiccups such as the plot hole of Mavis not being freezed by another Dracula (which is also carried over to the 2022 Hotel Transylvania film), Dracula's voice sounding a bit off in season 1, etc.