Review: Time to Bid Goodbye to 'Hotel Transylvania'

This image released by Sony Pictures Animation shows Drac, voiced by Brian Hull, left, and Monster Johnny, voiced by Andy Samberg in the animated film "Hotel Transylvania: Transformania." (Sony Pictures Animation via AP)
This image released by Sony Pictures Animation shows Drac, voiced by Brian Hull, left, and Monster Johnny, voiced by Andy Samberg in the animated film "Hotel Transylvania: Transformania." (Sony Pictures Animation via AP)
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Review: Time to Bid Goodbye to 'Hotel Transylvania'

This image released by Sony Pictures Animation shows Drac, voiced by Brian Hull, left, and Monster Johnny, voiced by Andy Samberg in the animated film "Hotel Transylvania: Transformania." (Sony Pictures Animation via AP)
This image released by Sony Pictures Animation shows Drac, voiced by Brian Hull, left, and Monster Johnny, voiced by Andy Samberg in the animated film "Hotel Transylvania: Transformania." (Sony Pictures Animation via AP)

Here are some good things about the fourth Hotel Transylvania movie: Kathryn Hahn, who is as evocative a voice actor as she is in live action; The monster sidekicks voiced by David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi and Brad Abrell; A joke about a single marshmallow (really); The revelation that the invisible man has been naked this whole time; The 94-minute runtime; And its easy accessibility on Amazon Prime Video starting on Jan. 14.

But perhaps the best thing about “ Hotel Transylvania: Transformania ” is that it’s the end. The well of ideas on this particular property has apparently run dry and they have made the wise decision to show themselves the door. Though not wise enough to end on a particularly high note.

What started as a clever enough riff on a father-daughter relationship, monsters and the hospitality industry has been on cruise control from its early days and has been running out of fuel since. It’s hard to shake the feeling that everyone was just phoning it in for this final go. Actually, it’s not even “everyone” since Adam Sandler, who was the marquee sell for the previous three as Count “Drac” Dracula, managed to bow out early. Kevin James did too.

This time, under the direction of Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska, Drac is voiced by Brian Hull, who does a fine job approximating Sandler’s vampire shtick. And though the character has had three movies to get used to the idea of his daughter’s relationship, he hasn’t evolved much from the first movie, when he sits back in horror as Mavis (Selena Gomez) meets and falls in with a human man, Johnny (Andy Samberg). In the world of Hotel Transylvania, they’ve since married AND had a child, but Johnny still feels like an outsider, and Drac is still loathe to accept him as part of the family. So, in this installment, which was executive produced and co-written by franchise creator Genndy Tartakovsky, Drac decides in a backstage panic to not make a big, public announcement about giving the hotel to Mavis and Johnny.

Johnny, thinking it’s his fault because he’s not a monster, asks Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) to help him change. It works. He becomes a toothy, goofy, scaly abomination and everything goes haywire. Drac becomes human, which for him means out of shape and kind of pathetic, like a stereotype of an American on vacation, raising uncomfortable questions as to whether or not the transformations are a commentary on the subject’s essential selves or humans in general. It’s even further compounded by the human forms Frank, Murray, Wayne and Griffin take — one is handsome, another ancient. Regardless, no one cares to stay altered, and they all have to travel around the globe to find a crystal to change them back so it doesn’t become permanent.

It’s hard to overstate just how garish and frenetic this whole endeavor is. Even with the explosion of colors it still strains to hold interest. The manic “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” does not seem to be for parents or for very young kids. Perhaps there’s a sweet spot for 8- to 12-year-olds who may love these characters and be on board for whatever adventure they find themselves in, but even this might test their patience.



Movie Review: The Villains Steal the Show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

 From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: The Villains Steal the Show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

 From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
From left, Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn arrive at the premiere of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" on Monday, July 21, 2025, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

More than six decades after Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created a superhero team to rival the Justice League, the Fantastic Four finally get a worthy big-screen adaption in a spiffy ’60s-era romp, bathed in retrofuturism and bygone American optimism.

Though the Fantastic Four go to the very origins of Marvel Comics, their movie forays have been marked by missteps and disappointments. The first try was a Roger Corman-produced, low-budget 1994 film that was never even released.

But, after some failed reboots and a little rights maneuvering, Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the first Fantastic Four movie released by Marvel Studios. And a sense of returning to Marvel roots permeates this one, an endearingly earnest superhero drama about family and heroism, filled with modernist “Jetsons” designs that hark back to a time when the future held only promise.

“First Steps,” with a title that nods to Neil Armstrong, quickly reminds that before the Fantastic Four were superheroes, they were astronauts. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (a soulful Ebon Moss-Bachrach) flew into space but return altered by cosmic rays. “We came back with anomalies,” explains Reed, sounding like me after a family road trip.

They are now, respectively, the bendy Mister Fantastic, the fast-disappearing Invisible Woman, the fiery Human Torch and the Thing, a craggy CGI boulder of a man. In the glimpses of them as astronauts, the images are styled after NASA footage of Apollo 11, like those seen in the great documentaries “For All Mankind” and “Apollo 11.”

But part of the fun of the Fantastic Four has always been that while the foursome might have the right stuff, they also bicker and joke and argue like any other family. The chemistry here never feels intimate enough in “First Steps” to quite capture that interplay, but the cast is good, particularly Kirby.

In the first moments of “First Steps,” Sue sets down a positive pregnancy test before a surprised Reed. That night at dinner — Moss-Bachrach, now an uncle rather than a cousin, is again at work in the kitchen — Ben and Johnny immediately guess what’s up. The rest of the world is also eager to find out what, if any, powers the baby will have.

We aren’t quite in our world, but a very similar parallel one called Earth-828. New York looks about the same, and world leaders gather in a version of the United Nations named the Future Foundation. The Thing wears a Brooklyn Dodgers cap. Someone sounding a lot like Walter Cronkite reads the news.

And there’s a lot to read when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) suddenly hovers over the city, announcing: “I herald your end. I herald Galactus.” The TV blares, as it could on so many days: “Earth in Peril. Developing Story.”

Yes, the Earth (or some Earth) might be in danger, but did you get a look at that Silver Surfer? That’s Johnny Storm’s response, and perhaps ours, too. She's all chrome, like a smelted Chrysler Building, with slicked-back hair and melancholy eyes. He’s immediately taken by her, but she shoots off into space. In a rousing, NASA-like launch (the original Kirby and Lee comic came eight years before the moon landing), the Fantastic Four blast off into the unknown to meet this Galactus.

But if the Silver Surfer made an impression, Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) does even more so. Fantastic Four movies have always before gone straight for Doctor Doom as a villain, but his entrance, this time, is being held up for “Avengers: Doomsday.” Still, Galactus, a planet-eating tyrant, is no slouch. A mechanical colossus and evident fan of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” he sits on an enormous throne in space. Sensing enormous power in Sue’s unborn child, he offers to spare Earth for the baby.

What follows casts motherhood — its empowerments and sacrifices — onto a cosmic plane. There’s a nifty chase sequence in space that plays out during contractions. The two “Incredibles” movies covered some similar ground, in both retro design and stretchy parent and superhuman baby, with notably more zip and comic verve than “The Fantastic Four.” That's part of the trouble of not getting a proper movie for so long: Better films have already come along inspired by the '60s comic.

But as good as Vanessa Kirby is in “First Steps,” the movie is never better than when the Silver Surfer or Galactus are around. Shakman, a former child actor who’s directed mostly in television (most relevantly, “WandaVision”), proves especially adept at capturing the enormous scale of Galactus. “First Steps” may be, at heart, a kaiju movie.

What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It’s a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive. I was more likely to be moved by a really handsome chalkboard than I was by its vision of motherhood.

But, especially for a superhero team that’s never before quite taken flight on screen, “First Steps” is a sturdy beginning, with impeccable production design by Kasra Farahani and a rousing score by Michael Giacchino. Even if the unifying space-age spirit of Kirby and Lee's comic feels very long ago, indeed.