Hotel Transylvania 2

As the Autumn time begins, we start seeing trailers on Halloween type films and certainly other films as well. We've seen many films out at this time fitting to the season: "Halloween", "Friday the 13th", "Fright Night", 2012's "Hotel Transylvania", and now we have in our midst, the follow up, "Hotel Transylvania 2".

The Drac pack is back and everything seems to be changing for the better at Hotel Transylvania... Dracula's ridged monster-only hotel policy was finally relaxed, opening up its doors to human guests, but behind closed coffins, Drac (Adam Sandler) is worried that his adorable half-human, half-vampire grandson, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff), isn't showing signs of being a vampire. So while Mavis (Selena Gomez) is busy visiting her human in-laws with Johnny (Andy Samberg)-- and for a major cultural shock of her own-- "Vampa" Drac enlists his friends Frank (Kevin James), Wayne (Steve Buscemi), Murray (Keegan-Michael Key) and Griffin (David Spade) to put Dennis through a "monster-in-training" boot camp. But little do they know that Drac's grumpy and very old, old, old school dad Vlad (Mel Brooks) is about to pay a family visit to the hotel. And when Vlad finds out that his great-grandson is not a pure blood-- and humans are now welcome at Hotel Transylvania-- things are going to get really batty!

Others to round out the cast are Fran Drescher as Eunice, Molly Shannon as Wanda, Megan Mullally as Grandma Linda, Nick Offerman as Grandpa Mike, Dana Carvey as Dana and Rob Riggle as Bela.

As with the first installment of this franchise, I was reluctant in seeing this--the trailer really didn't sell this, but after seeing it, I felt it was creative, funny, and entertaining. It had the same feel as its predecessor--of course it was directed by the same artist, Glenndy Tartakovsky (also tons of TV and shorts). He helmed both films well, and it makes me wonder what this guy could do given some other project. After this, he assuredly will receive more work. It was well written by Robert Smigel and Adam Sandler. Usually I don't like Sandler's writing, but this was certainly an exception to that rule. Also considering that Sandler didn't write the original whereas Smigel did, makes me marvel that much more over his writing in this. Smigel and Sandler have known each other for years considering they worked together on SNL, so it's not tough to believe that they could pull off this screenplay. There were a couple of places that were a bit slow wondering what the characters were supposed to do next, but at the end of the day this story had me chuckling in many places, unlike I would've done on a good deal of Sandler's comedies. The animation by SPI (Sony Pictures Imageworks) was expertly created.

Could we possibly see a "Hotel Transylvania 3" in our near future? Certainly if this film does well at the box office as it has been doing, my bet would be for sure. And even though it's a franchise, this is one franchise that I would actually love to see again. Break out the popcorn!

Out of 4 Stars: 3.5                                      Rated: PG                                   89mins.