The Hotel Transylvania series has always gotten by resurrecting that Famous Monsters of Filmland childhood soul in every moviegoer. The real creature feature fan truly believes that Dracula and the Wolfman were the heroes of their story. Mentally and cinematically they all felt like one big happy family.
This time around the brood leaves the hotel for the ultimate hotel on the sea, a monster cruise that departs from the Bermuda Triangle with stops at an underwater volcano to exploit and violate the local aquatic life, a deserted island and that ultimate monster paradise- the lost city of Atlantis to get in various Indiana Jones spoofs that become a romantic tango of avoiding and attracting booby traps. The music hits are appropriately ancient, intended to produce Good Vibrations, a Don’t Worry Be Happy feeling that ends in a Macarena of a monster bash.
Like any good cruise story, love is the air. The series regular director Gendry Tartakovsky and co-writer Michael McCullers wryly playoff off the homoerotic match made in heavenly hell nature of the Van Helsing-Dracula relationship to give the Count an appropriately lineage and cisgender love interest, albeit one with a fetchingly large booty that mysteriously shrinks as the movie gets older.
The series gentle heart has always stuck to its winning formula of total inclusion because underneath all of us are all the same monsters with a good heart. Every life, even steam punk rehabilitated one’s like Van Helsing, have value.
Like all good cruises Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation knows how to sign you up for the next one.
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