In Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation, join our favourite monster family as they embark on a vacation on a luxury monster cruise ship so Drac can take a summer vacation from providing everyone else’s vacation at the hotel. It’s smooth sailing for Drac’s Pack as the monsters indulge in all of the shipboard fun the cruise has to offer, from monster volleyball to exotic excursions, and catching up on their moon tans. But the dream vacation turns into a nightmare when Mavis realizes Drac has fallen for the mysterious captain of the ship, Ericka, who hides a dangerous secret that could destroy all of monsterkind.

Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation stars Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buschemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Mel Brooks, Kathryn Hahn and Jim Gaffigan, and is in cinemas 28 June 2018!
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It’s smooth sailing for the Drac Pack as the monsters indulge in all of the shipboard fun the cruise has to offer, from monster volleyball to exotic excursions, and catching up on their moon tans.

But the dream vacation turns into a nightmare when Mavis realizes Drac has fallen for the mysterious captain of the ship, Ericka, who hides a dangerous secret that could destroy all of monsterkind.

Starring Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buschemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Mel Brooks – IN CINEMAS JULY 5, 2018.
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It was littered with mildly funny gags referencing classic horror films, blended with a modern yet ironically timeless grrrl power theme about a grown-up daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), rebelling against her old fashioned father, Dracula (Adam Sandler), for her right to make her own way in the big bad world. Drac also has to learn to accept Mavis’ choice of partner; in this case, a normal human, Jonathan (Andy Samberg). Hotel Transylvania 2 goes one step further in this ethos and this turns out to be a tiny step too far.

This time around old-fashioned Drac applies his preconceived expectations on his grandson and struggles to accept his new normy in-laws. Anxious that his grandson will be normal not monster, Drac and his monster buddies strongly encourage the tyke towards the latter with predictably goofy results. With typical sequelitis symptoms, the film reruns much of the same sentiment as its predecessor and feels correspondingly stale.

The film does feature a villain but he doesn’t come into effect until the final act and is, naturally, despatched by the end of the final act, so there is little tension created through the bulk of the film.

With no significant new characters introduced – the grandson isn’t so much a character as a McGuffin for Drac to bounce off – the film relies solely on it’s new plot which is lite in tone and content. As a result, the movie feels distinctly episodic rather than a standalone feature film. Straight to home video would have been more appropriate than a cinematic release.

Stuart Jamieson
www.hoteltransylvania2.com

Pixels follows on from the likes of Wreck It Ralph and TRON, mashing up the real world with that of the video game. This time around it turns out that a videotape of classic arcade games was sent into space in the early eighties and discovered by aliens who used its contents to model weapons with which to attack us. It all makes perfect sense really. Naturally the best hope for Earth’s defence are former classic gamer champions who suitably proceed to kick all kinds of pixelated ass. Yes, it’s silly. Yes, it’s fun.

There’s enough pop culture references from the eighties to the tweenies to poke fun at both gens X and Y whilst remaining supremely entertaining for gen Z. There’s plenty of visual gags, generation specific quips and some outstanding CGI to tie it all together and only the hardest of sardonic hearts could fail to be entertained, even if it were only the slightest bit.

Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad are joined by some remarkable star power that includes Brian Cox, Sean Bean and Dan Aykroyd among a slew of other cameos wanting to get their face into a big budget movie. Most of the performers deliver their expected shtick and in a movie of this nature, there’s nothing wrong with that.

The film’s climax is a fantastic exercise in classic game character spotting, incumbent with the obligatory in-game sound signatures that accompany each of them.

Pixels is a mindless, fun blockbuster. Will history hold it in the same esteem as TRON or Wreck It Ralph? No, it’s much more disposable than that. But it delivers more than you’d expect from a film that is clearly derived from a popular trend set by better predecessors.

Stuart Jamieson
www.pixels-movie.com