 Can the Hotel Transylvania property strike lightning four times over? Would it be a question I would ask if Hotel Transylvania 3 was any good? Short answer? No. The Sandler Monster Pack is back, baby. We have David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Andy Sandberg, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Steve Buscemi, Selena Gomez, Adam Sandler of- What? He's not in this one? Ah, that would explain the incredibly weird intro to this film. For some reason, and I couldn't actually find an answer as of recording, Adam Sandler isn't back for the fourth installment. Some are speculating, and I think it's fair to piggyback off the concept that Adam Sandler is under contract with Netflix and he can't do films for competing streaming services. I don't want to brag, but I am an Amazon Prime member. Yeah, I'll give you a second to let that sink in. And some of the Kutramants that come with being such an elite holder are exclusive videos, like Hotel Transylvania 4. Transformania. It's a great title. It's a great title. It was a bold move, Codden, for the first couple of minutes to feature Drax back on his yoke, playing just the two of us. For starters, it's a different voice actor and it sounds horrible. Like, this rendition of just the two of us is miserable. Secondly, we already had the definitive version of that song in Austin Powers 2. Dr. Evil sings it to many me. It's a beautiful number. It's perfect. If we're not already looking at the Will Smith version to begin with, which was already a masterpiece. So, a really bad way to kick things off. Now, I'm sure Brian Hull is very talented. He's the new voice actor. I guess he got big on YouTube for doing some impressions of Adam Sandler and other actors. It's just not translating one to one. There's definitely something missing. Some of the speech pattern, some of the way he pronounces things. It's off. Andy Samberg, who I find incredibly charming and lovable, is bad in this. He is really obnoxious. I think it doesn't help that they give his character a much bigger focus this time. Instead of being more of a playoff of Drax, he's kind of the star of the show. And man, is it annoying. And my beautiful Selena Gomez. Back is Mavis. Not even trying to do a voice. She's just straight up Selena Gomez. It's not like she was really putting on a show before. I just didn't notice as much Gomez. In the previous three films. The animation is still very lively. Still has that Tartakovsky brand on it. But he's not directing anymore. I don't think he even directed the third one. I'm not entirely sure, but it would make sense that he didn't because that one's not very good. And this one's just atrocious. This is a property that had a little bit of bite in the first couple entries, pun intended. Now it's just completely for children. And I don't even know what age group because I had two kids watch this. A 12 year old and a nine year old. Bored to death. Didn't like it, weren't impressed. My wife fell asleep on the couch. I was in and out. I just can't anymore with this property. It's well past its prime. And hopefully they leave this thing out. The plot once again revolves around Drax and his trepidious relationship with Jonathan is son-in-law. Dracula's ready to unhinge the fangs, hang up the cape, call it a day on Hotel Transylvania. Let Mavis take control. It's something she's always dreamed of doing so it seems to make sense. She's good at what she does. Jonathan, however, is a complete waste of life. Drax knows it. Everyone but Mavis knows it and he can't possibly let this dude be in charge of the hotel. Guy can barely run his own life. It's been a while since I've seen these other Hotel Transylvania movies but I feel like we've kind of let this well run dry. Their relationship has been rocky but it was resolved three times over. And now once again, we're going back to this well. So where does this crazy Transformania come into play? We're gonna see humans turn into monsters and vice versa. Yeah, it's just as lame as you think it would be. Well, what happens is Dracula once again throws out a lie to Jonathan. He says, John, booby, you gotta be a monster in order to run my hotel, blah, blah, blah, things of that nature. Well, Jonathan takes that to heart. And he heads on down to the basement to Van Helsing who conveniently has such an object to turn a person into a monster. Van Helsing tells them he spent three years tracking this thing down. It's very rare and hard to find. And I guess I don't really know why Van Helsing wanted it to begin with because he's never used it once. We know this because after he uses it on a guinea pig, literally, the guinea pig becomes a monster and then gets worse and worse as the story unfolds to the point where it's a Godzilla type creature that's gonna wreak havoc on everything that comes in its path. Van Helsing had no idea because he's never used it himself. So why? Why track it down? Maybe he's just a collector. Fair. I guess fair. I know it's an animated family movie so we don't have to think too much about the plot. But when my kids start to question things right away, that's how you know you're failing on all levels. One such example would be right away at the beginning. We find out that Drax has Professor Xavier Powers where he can freeze all humans and creatures that aren't vampires. He stops time, starts interacting with objects, and then he pops it back up so everybody doesn't know what happened. Not even 10 minutes later, he's chasing down Jonathan throughout the entire hotel and my kids are like, why doesn't he just freeze him? The kid's right there. Just freeze him. Well, it's a fair question. And I turned to him and I said, yeah, that power's never gonna come up again. And it didn't. Listen, I'm not a hater of this franchise. I really enjoy the first two quite a bit. The third one's even watchable. There's some funny ideas. And that's not to say the fourth is outright terrible. There are a couple of cute parts in it. Usually it revolves around visuals, characters shrinking down, flying sideways through buildings and different objects and debris. The animation's lovely. As far as the humor from the written word? No, there's not a single line I can think back on and go, ah, that was funny. Wait, there was one. And I'm pretty sure it's in the trailer where one of the zombies turns back human and he's like, hey, I'm a human again. And then he gets bit and goes right back to a zombie. That was funny. I laughed there. That was the only time. The movie's done in 88 minutes. It's not even an hour and a half. This is Men in Black one running time. So you would think it would be in and out. It would get its laughs. It doesn't overstay its welcome. The whole movie overstays its welcome. This didn't need to be made. Shouldn't have been made. If you're looking for a target demo for this film, I'd say we're looking five years of age to eight. And that's being kind of generous. I just don't see any adults really enjoying this at all. And older kids are just going to be sick of it. Oh, and if you're looking forward to more of Jonathan and Mavis' cute little boy, he's in it for one scene and then never again. Who's watching this child? They just leave him alone at the hotel while they go off on their misadventures. It's weird. The whole transforming from monsters into humans and vice versa could have been funny. There's just not a lot of jokes there to play off of. The Frankenstein becoming a good-looking dude. That was funny, but it's played out. And really that was the only thing I found even remotely interesting. It was just a bad ill-conceived concept to take up an entire movie. And clearly by the runtime, they figured this out as they were going. This should have been a short 10-minute thing on Amazon Prime instead of a full feature-length film. Much like the movie itself, this review probably didn't need to happen. I think we all know what we're gonna get from a Hotel Transylvania 4, especially if you watch the other three. The quality's not going up over time. It's dipping pretty far. Let me know if you wasted time watching this fourth outing. Leave a comment below. Like the video if you had a good time. Subscribe if you haven't. I put out reviews and rants and whatnot every single week here. Love to have you on board. Hopefully I'll see you around. Take care. Hey, since you stuck around, maybe think about joining me on Patreon at Patreon.com slash AdamDoesMovies or right here via the YouTube Join button. There's a dollar tier on Patreon. There's a 4.99 tier here. It's just a nice way to say, hey, Adam, I love what you're doing. Keep it up. Here's a couple bucks a month. Stay the course, man. 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