Hotel Transylvania

Hotel Transylvania is an American 2012 3D CGI-animated comedy film, produced by Sony Pictures Animation and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. It is the twelfth Sony Pictures Animation film and features the voices of Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, CeeLo Green, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Molly Shannon, and Fran Drescher. It was released on September 28, 2012.

Official Plotedit | edit source
Welcome to the Hotel Transylvania, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler)'s lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up, free to be the monsters they are without humans to bother them. On one special weekend, Dracula invites some of the world's most famous monsters - Frankenstein and his bride, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, a family of werewolves, and more - to celebrate his daughter Mavis' 118th birthday. For Drac, catering to all of these legendary monsters is no problem - but his world could come crashing down when one ordinary guy stumbles into the hotel and takes a shine to Mavis.

Synopsisedit | edit source
Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) is the owner and creator of Hotel Transylvania, a 5-star resort where the world's monsters can be safe from human civilization. Dracula invites some of the most famous monsters – like Frankenstein (Kevin James) and his wife Eunice (Fran Drescher), Murray the mummy (CeeLo Green), the werewolf couple Wayne and Wanda (Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Bigfoot, The Blob, and other monsters to celebrate his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez)' 118th birthday. But Mavis prefers to explore the outside world with her dad's permission, but the village he directs her to is actually an elaborate deception to convince her of the threat of humans enough to coax her back.

However, this charade inadvertently attracts the attention of a human traveler named Jonathan (Andy Samberg) who was exploring the surrounding forest and he follows the staff to the hotel. Once Jonathan enters the hotel, Dracula frantically tries to hide him from the patrons, such as disguising him as a Flesh Golem named Johnny-stein with the later hasty cover story of being a relative of one of Frank's body parts. Eventually, Jonathan is discovered by Mavis and company, forcing Dracula to claim that he's going to arrange Mavis' birthday party with a young perspective. In doing so, Jonathan manages to liven up the staid activities at the hotel, charming everyone, especially Mavis. Sooner or later, even Dracula starts to like Jonathan, taking him into his confidence about his family's traumatic past after he notices that Jonathan knows something about them in a respectful manner.

Unfortunately, Chef Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz) realizes that Jonathan is human and captures him to cook him, forcing Dracula to directly intervene by magically paralyzing the chef. Eventually, the birthday party happens and it is a raucous success until Dracula overreacts to Mavis and Jonathan's innocent kiss. Things get worse when Quasimodo interrupts the party and he reveals Jonathan's true nature. Even as the clientèle are revolted, Dracula, in his ranting, lets it slip that he tricked Mavis at the fake village and Mavis is mad at being so manipulated by her own dad. For his part, Jonathan feels obliged to reject Mavis for her father's sake and he leaves the hotel. Afterwards, Dracula realizes that in his efforts to protect Mavis, he broke her heart and she now tearfully wants to stay at the hotel forever.

Wishing to undo his mistake, Dracula persuades his friends to help him find Jonathan and even risks his destruction by venturing out in the daylight to do so. Learning that Jonathan is about to board a flight out of Transylvania Airport shortly, they race on and enter a town en route. At that town, Dracula and his friends are stunned to see the humans celebrating a monster holiday, with many humans costumed as the monsters in tribute. To clear a path, Frankenstein tries to scare them, but he finds that the humans are cheerfully welcoming them instead and even provide a shaded route through the town for Dracula to proceed at maximum speed.

But Dracula realizes he's too late because Jonathan's plane started taking off. With no alternative, Dracula sadly flies after it in broad daylight, despite being hurt by the sun. With maximum effort, Dracula manages to reach the plane and he resorts to mind-controlling one of the pilots to apologize and tell Jonathan that he wants him to come back to be with Mavis. Jonathan accepts Dracula's apology and he manipulates the plane back to the airport.

Later, Dracula returns Jonathan to Mavis, who apologizes and explains why he had to reject her and that she's his "zing". Dracula gives his blessing to their relationship, Jonathan and Mavis kiss, and the hotel has another party to celebrate his daughter's liberating coming of age before Jonathan and Mavis set off on their travels.

The movie ends with Dracula and his friends being shown in traditional animation during the credits.

Voice castedit | edit source

 * Adam Sandler as Dracula, the main protagonist. He is the Hotel Transylvania founder / owner and Mavis' dad.
 * Selena Gomez as Mavis, the deuteragonist. She is Dracula's 118-year-old "teenage" daughter.
 * Andy Samberg as Jonathan, the tritagonist. He is a 21-year-old human explorer who falls in love with Mavis.
 * Kevin James as Frank / Frankenstein, the secondary tritagonist. He is one of Dracula's friends and Mavis' uncle.
 * Steve Buscemi as Wayne, a werewolf who is one of Dracula's friends and Wanda's husband.
 * CeeLo Green as Murray, a fat mummy who is one of Dracula's friends.
 * David Spade as Griffin the Invisible Man, one is one of Dracula's friends.
 * Jon Lovitz as Quasimodo, the main antagonist. He is the former hunchback of Notre Dame who's now a gourmet chef.
 * Molly Shannon as Wanda, a werewolf who is Wayne's wife.
 * Fran Drescher as Eunice, a frankenstein who is Frank's wife.
 * Sadie Sandler as Winnie
 * Robert Smigel as Marty, Fake Dracula
 * Jackie Sandler as Martha
 * Chris Parnell as Fly
 * Paul Brittain, Craig Kellman, Brian McCann, Jonny Solomon, Jim Wise as Hydra
 * Luenell Campbell as Shrunken Heads
 * Brian George as Suits of Armor
 * Rob Riggle as Skeleton Husband

Productionedit | edit source
Hotel Transylvania has been in development since 2006, when Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss were set to direct the movie. In 2008, Jill Culton took over the directing position, and around 2010, Chris Jenkins, followed by Todd Wilderman. In 2011, Genndy Tartakovsky has joined Sony as the 6th director to direct his feature directorial debut.

In less than a year, Tartakovsky rewrote the script and reimagined the movie to follow the energy, organic-ness, and exaggeration of the 2D animation, particularly of the Tex Avery's cartoons. "I took all the aesthetics I like from 2-D and applied them here," Tartakovsky said. "I don't want to do animation to mimic reality. I want to push reality." "I wanted to have an imprint so you'd go, 'Well, only Genndy can make this.' It's hard, especially with CG, but I feel there's a lot of moments that feel that they're very me, so hopefully it'll feel different enough that it has a signature to it."

In November 2011, it was announced that Miley Cyrus would voice Mavis, Dracula's teenage daughter, but in February 2012, Cyrus left the movie to focus on other projects, such as LOL and So Undercover. It was later announced that Selena Gomez would replace Cyrus. As well, David Koechner was going to voice Chef Quasimodo at first, but he was replaced by Jon Lovitz.[citation needed]

Critical responseedit | edit source
Hotel Transylvania has received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 44% of critics gave the film positive reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10 based on 91 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 49 out of 100 based on 21 reviews. CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed that the average grade cinemagoers gave Hotel Transylvania was an A- on an A+ to F scale.

Box officeedit | edit source
As of October 1, 2012, Hotel Transylvania has earned $148,313,048 in North America and $210,062,555 in other countries for a worldwide total of $358,375,603.

It topped the box office with $11 million on Friday and $43 million domestically and $51.1 million internationally for the weekend, breaking the record for the largest-grossing September opening ever, ahead of Sweet Home Alabama ($35.6 million). It is also the highest grossing debut for Sony Pictures Animation, beating the The Smurfs' opening of $35.6M.

Releaseedit | edit source
Hotel Transylvania opened on September 8, 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, an received a wide release on September 28, 2012.

Marketingedit | edit source
Hotel Transylvania's first international trailer was released on March 27, 2012. The U.S. domestic trailer debuted on April 24, 2012, and was attached to ''The Pirates! Band of Misfits''. The second trailer debuted on June 21, 2012, and was seen on some prints of Brave.

Triviaedit | edit source

 * This is the last Sony Pictures Animation film to be broadcast on STARZ, as the following Sony Picutres Animation films from The Smurfs 2 onwards began streaming on Netflix.
 * The second Sony Pictures Animation film to be scored by Mark Mothersbaugh, followed by Hotel Transylvania 2.
 * The second film where Columbia Pictures receives a variant this time the torch lady turns into a bat at the beginning because in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs the Torch Lady gets hit by a banana.
 * This is the 5th Sony Pictures Animation film to be produced in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, after Arthur Christmas, The Smurfs, Surf's Up, and Open Season.
 * In TV airings, the long pauses in the Bingo scene are removed.