"It's party time!"
Hello everyone!
Now that my Turkish soap opera/drama has wrapped up, I don't know what to do with myself in the evenings.
I know, it's ridiculous.
But I DID have time to actually focus on movies this weekend seeing as CBS had a bit of a break and there was nothing to watch on television for a couple of nights.
I didn't feel like going into anything too dramatic or too over-the-top however, and eventually felt the need for something light and funny and airy. And while I enjoyed the first movie of this installment, the second one kind of left me hanging, so I was sceptical about going in for the third.
Turns out, however, that I needn't have worried.
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation was awesome.
I've never reviewed any of these movies before, which is kind of a shame I've just realized, and I'm probably going to be rewatching at least number one. That one had been hilarious the first time I saw it, and while the second one was a meh episode, this third one is now a hoot again.
Very briefly though: in the first movie, we meet Dracula and his motley band of monsters who run a hotel (like the title says) and a human wanders into their midst. Dracula has been very anti-human since they killed his wife and left him alone with his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), but Mavis goes and falls in love with this human, Johnny, and ends up marrying him after many, MANY ups and downs.
In the second movie, Mavis and Johnny have a son, Dennis, and Dracula spends all of the movie trying to scare the little boy into showing that he's a vampire with wings and fangs. It's a bit of a rinse and repeat kind of thing so that's probably why it didn't appeal to me as much.
Now, however, we come to movie three!
In which Dracula and Mavis are apparently in the wedding planning business now, working hard, but watching everyone couple up is a bit hard for our favourite vamp.
Also, his friends want to set him up, though the date they pick is kinda ... scary.
Anyway, Mavis also figures out something's up, but she attributes it more to the fact that her dad's overworked, so she books them a monster cruise to - dun dun dun - Atlantis!
While I'm chortling like a maniac as they fly with Gremlin Air (it's a thing) and Dennis checks on his hidden-away puppy (Drac, what WERE you thinking when you allowed that?) though I'm not sure how something so big can just be snuck past a bajillion monsters, Dracula is just not having it.
The cruise ship pops up after they land with the plane, and I'm sitting there going IT'S THE TITANIC!
Also me: my bad. It has five chimneys not four.
Ahem.
Once on the ship, however, Dracula changes his mind about this floating hotel when he sees the captain; Ericka is human, but she says she wanted to give monsters an experience that humans have all the time, so don't hold that against her!
But of course, even as Dracula Zings - that's a monster thing, in which when you see your monstrous soulmate you actually ZING and then live happily ever after, but it shouldn't occur twice - Ericka has her own agenda.
Her full name is Ericka Van Helsing.
Any self-respecting Dracula affictionado will recognise the name of the vampire's one true Nemesis, and this time is no different, as at the beginning of the movie we're treated to a montage of Dracula defeating Van Helsing over and over again (let's not go into how Drac & Co went and disguised themselves as little old ladies on a train to Budapest), swearing he'll one day restore the family legacy. His great-something-removed granddaughter Ericka was brought up to hate Dracula and to kill him when the time was right, so she and Van Helsing are going to Atlantis to find an ancient artifact.
One so powerful, in fact, that it destroyed the civilisation of Atlantis, which was reportedly the most advanced monster kingdom of all time.
So now the plan is to get there, get the object, destroy the monsters AND Atlantis a second time, and be legends.
One would argue Van Helsing should be out of the running considering he's half machine at this point, but, to each their own.
While Dracula's friends are convinced Ericka likes him (in fact, they're right, but they actually overhear her soliloquy on how she wants to kill him first), Mavis is convinced something's wrong, the puppy which was snuck aboard hates the very scent of Van Helsing, and Dracula ...
... has lost the power of speech, but gained dance moves to Bruno Mars.
Anyway, through some hilarious sequences during which Ericka tries - but failts - to actually kill Drac and only serves to inflame him further, they finally reach Atlantis which, wait for it, is a casino-slash-city.
Welcomed by Joe Jonas -cough- sorry, the Kraken, the monsters go in to have a good time, and Drac follows Ericka when she goes to retrieve the artifact (Mavis follows them both), and the two tango their way up to get it. However, Mavis has a thing or two to say about this, and Ericka, frightened, pushes Dracula away.
At the final party (a rave, of all things), Mavis gets some really good advice from Johnny about relationships (which he got from a cartoon) and tells her dad to go after Ericka, but by that point Van Helsing pops up to explain his evil plan, Ericka in tow (though she looks ashamed and sad) and THEN ...
... starts playing music.
That's right, the thing that brought down Atlantis was techno music so bad it makes the Kraken mad and it comes to tear the casino apart.
Realising she'd made a mistake, Ericka rescues Dracula from the Kraken, taking his side, and Drac joins forces with Johnny (conveniently a DJ) to duke it out in a song-off, ending with, yup, you guessed it, the song bound to make even the most miserable scrooge happy, Macarena.
The Kraken snaps out of it, Van Helsing apologies, and the lot return to Hotel Transylvania where Dracula pops the big question to Ericka, who says yes!
Now let's see if there's a movie four in the works.
Also, if you see any runaway wolf pups, don't mind them. There's a billion of them in this movie and the poor fish tasked with their care during the cruise needs a holiday at Hotel Transylvania afterwards.
xx
*images and video not mine
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