BEFORE: Maybe you think that "Coco" isn't much of a horror film - well, I can only work with the puzzle pieces that I'm given. But this one's definitely more Halloween-ey, even though it's another cartoon. Nearly ALL of the classic monsters are in this one, and yeah, I know it's a comedy film for kids, but I'm working on something big picture here. Believe me, I went through a great internal debate over whether this one should be watched during the summer or October. Because summer vacation, right?
Now I'm starting to have doubts about the films that are going to directly follow this one - I've got to go into really tame non-horror animated films if I want to connect this to the remainder of a horror chain. I'm not proud of it, but right now keeping the chain alive is a little bit more important than programming thematically. I apologize if you were expecting to be scared by this week's films - but I'm going to get there, I promise. And if I don't get there, I'm going to arrive somewhere else. I've got my road to the end of the year and I swore I wouldn't tear the chain apart again...
Jaime Camil carries over from "Coco", to voice a Chupacabra in tonight's film.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Hotel Transylvania 2" (Movie #2,465)
THE PLOT: Count Dracula and company participate in a cruise for sea-loving monsters, unaware that their boat is being commandeered by the monster-hating Van Helsing family.
AFTER: Well, this one was harmless enough. Reducing the Lord of the Vampires to a cartoon sure makes him easier to swallow for the kiddies. I don't think he bites one neck in this film or sucks anyone's blood, and that's a shame. Couldn't we scare the kids just a LITTLE BIT? I guess they really wanted to ensure that PG rating, and not even flirt with a PG-13. The worst that happens is that Frankenstein's monster loses a couple of his limbs on the beach, but they were sewn on to begin with, and he replaces them with some big lobster claws from the ship's buffet as a gag. There's not even a hint of sexual activity, either, though the werewolf couple has a lot of kids (an impossible number, to be honest, even if they do have litters like dogs) but there's no mention of where they came from. OK, a little werewolf girl kisses the half-vampire boy, that's pretty tame.
Count Dracula hasn't even dated since his (human) wife died, I guess that's the price you pay for being immortal. NITPICK POINT: Why didn't he turn her into an inhuman vampire like himself, so she would live longer? Surely he had a long history before that of turning women into vampires, was she that special that he wanted to outlive her? That doesn't make any sense, if he cared about her why not help her live longer and maintain the relationship? But while on board the ship, Drac feels the old "ZING" feeling that he had for his wife when he sees the ship's captain, Ericka.
I saw the twist coming a mile away, though - they did a pretty good job of telegraphing it so that even the kiddos could follow it. (I may have been surprised by the plot twist in "Coco", but I was ready for this one today...). The opening sequence informs us that the notorious monster hunter Van Helsing pursued Dracula for many decades, and then mysteriously stopped. He planned to take down Dracula first, then pursue the other monsters, but a combination of Drac's invulnerability and/or bad luck always stopped him. So NITPICK POINT #2, if he got that frustrated with the Count, why not try an easier monster first, like the slow-moving Mummy? A few good hits on that dessicated old Egyptian body, and he'd probably disintegrate into sand. Anyway, pay attention to the opening because it could very easily be important later on in the film.
The whole staff of the Hotel Transylvania ends up going on vacation together (ugh, who wants to go on a cruise with their co-workers?) and it leaves from the Bermuda Triangle, and sails to the lost continent of Atlantis, which is somehow not lost any more, and coincidentally revealed to have been populated with monsters before its disappearance. Makes sense, I guess, the Greeks were really into mythological monsters and stuff, but I have to call foul on the appearance of the Kraken, which wasn't Greek at all but I think a Swedish monster. We only associate it with ancient times because of that movie "Clash of the Titans", which really got things wrong where Krakens are concerned. So that's NITPICK POINT #3, just because one movie got it wrong doesn't mean the next movie should keep the mistake alive, rather than fixing it. OK, so this Kraken sings, but it still doesn't belong here.
It's cute that the monster passengers all seem to sleep during the day and "moon-bathe" on the deck or go out on their excursions at night. Makes sense, the vampires need to be in their coffins all night anyway, but did we see them traveling with their coffins, or at least dirt from their homelands? I thought that was a pretty big part of the vampire mythos, that they needed to sleep in Transylvanian soil or something. It's also interesting to me that they flipped the script and made Van Helsing the villain, where he'd normally be a hero in a typical Dracula movie.
The rest, though, is a mix of jokes where some of them land, but a lot of them don't. The idea of a giant puppy that somehow stows along on a plane and a ship without being seen, well, it's just not funny. Then they put the giant puppy in an overcoat and a hat so people will think he's a person, but that's not funny, either. Wouldn't it have made more sense to disguise him as a monster, not a person? Because it's a cruise full of monsters, right? Make his fur stand up, make him growl, change the color of his fur, whatever, since there are already a number of animal-like monsters on the ship, plus this would have made a point about how some monsters are closer to animals than humans, like dragons or Bigfoots or the Loch Ness Monster, for example. N.P. 4.
It just feels like someone didn't spend enough time working out the story beats, and was only interested in setting up the visuals, like all of the monsters going to a dance party. Somebody's priorities were out of whack, if you ask me. This film made a TON of money for Sony, who am I to argue with success, but at what cost? Is it more important to keep your franchise popular, or to move the characters forward in a logical way? And maybe there are a few too many characters to keep track of, too. Most of them weren't even given anything important to do, except stand around and then dance at the end. It's more like creativity went on vacation.
Also starring the voices of Adam Sandler (last seen in "Top Five"), Andy Samberg (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Selena Gomez (last seen in "Spring Breakers"), Kevin James (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), David Spade (ditto), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "Norman"), Keegan-Michael Key (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Mel Brooks (ditto), Molly Shannon (last seen in "The Little Hours"), Fran Drescher (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2"), Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "Gilbert"), Asher Blinkoff, Sadie Sandler (last seen in "The Week Of"), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Chrissy Teigen, Joe Jonas (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Tara Strong, Chris Parnell (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Joe Whyte (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Aaron LaPlante (last seen in "Movie 43"), Genndy Tartakkovsky, Michelle Murdocca, Joyce Arrastia, Libby Thomas Dickey, Craig Kellman.
RATING: 5 out of 10 gremlins on a plane
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