Check it out, everybody; it’s a movie mad lib. That’s obviously what’s going on here. Seeing as Hotel Transylvania resurrected Van Helsing and set the conflict on “The Love Boat,” I can but guess that the producers vowed to greenlight whatever was summoned among three bingo ball cages, one entitled: “Bad Modern Franchises,” another labeled “Bad movies from 2004,” and a last wearing the caption, “Cheesy 70s TV.”
Here, you give it a try. Pick something random from every column and make a film:
Huh. I got Twilight, Alexander, and “Mork & Mindy” … ok, a teen girl is lovesick for a vampire alien who is dead set on conquering the world, but it turns out he’s gay.
Let’s do one more: Transformers, Garfield, “Three’s Company” … a lazy pet in rent-controlled housing is actually a giant robot in disguise, but it turns out he’s gay; wait, he’s just acting gay for the landlord. Hmmmm … do they all end this way?
The mad lib stuff is the only way I can possibly imagine as a justification for bringing the name “Van Helsing” back to theaters. Why would anyone do that? And why would anyone put Dracula (voice of Adam Sandler) on a cruise ship? Aren’t cruise ships about sitting around in the sun with a cocktail in your hand? Sun is obviously a no-no. Hey, maybe Drac likes a good Bloody Mary,
Eternal father of the evil undead, impaler, shapeshifting monster, and delightful hotel manager Dracula is feeling a little lonely these days; seems it’s been a good century or two since somebody sucked his … blood. I wouldn’t be so crass if the movie gave me more to work with; in the first five minutes, Dracula is on some sort-of monster hook-up swiping app making the same terrible snap judgments we condemn non-immortals for (example: “too many eyes,” “not enough eyes,” “not into tentacles…”). The material might have been a bit funnier before the #metoo movement.
Misreading dad’s dilemma, daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) books a cruise for Dracula to take a rest from the hotel biz. However, this is a Hotel Transylvania film, which means that wherever Dracula goes, his entourage follows. [Who watches the hotel while everyone is gone?] It’s funny how art imitates life, ain’t it? I imagine wherever Adam Sandler goes, he is constantly trailed by Kevin James, Chris Rock, and David Spade. Why wouldn’t it be any different for his animated alter ego?
Oh, but there are surprises around every porthole on Blood Boat, for Captain Ericka (Kathryn Hahn) is the platinum blonde of Vladdy’s dreams. Can these two crazy kids make a love match without invoking Ensign Gopher or Isaac the Bartender? And how does the Van Helsing angle fit in to all this? Don’t worry, there are plenty half-assed jokes to follow – the first time the kids in my theater laughed aloud was a healthy thirty minutes in. And why did the kids laugh? A set of garlic-intolerant fart jokes. Huh. I guess that’s a whole-assed joke. My apologies.
One of the big problems with this movie is the immediacy of comedy – here’s a premise; here’s a joke. Like the garlic thing. There’s no call for memory or big set-up or subtle “isn’t that funny, but we’re not going to call attention to it.” The 
writers of this film simply identified premise after premise of potential laughter and went for it completely unaware of whether a joke would land or what the next five minutes of movie might hold. Hey, there’s a sand castle. Hmmm, what would be funny to say about a sand castle? There it is. Did you laugh? No. Moving on.
I’m being more generous to this film than I meant to be; I’m readily acknowledging there was an effort here to entertain. It wasn’t a quality effort and it veered with wanton disregard for the audience. But it was there. So much as this film did not appeal to me, nor will it appeal to anyone else over the age of 6, I get that there are worse; heck, there are two worse films with the name “Hotel Transylvania” alone. I’d happily skip the entire franchise without a second thought, but under torture, I’d choose this one again among the three.
♪Blood
Vermillion some, grue
Prick some skin
It’s the fountain blew
Blood
Life’s common factor
Drink it in
And come back for more
The Blood Boat
Soon will be making a PG run
The blood boat
Monsters make fart jokes instead of fun
Set a course for Atlantis
Your mind on unearthly trance
And blood
Will hurt evermore
It’s an open wound and some nifty gore
It’s blood!♫
Rated PG, 97 Minutes
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Writer: Michael McCullers & Genndy Tartakovsky
Genre: Movie Madlib!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Your three-year-old fart-joke loving child, but I guarantee he’d like something else better
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Probably, me. Being inured twice over to the Hotel Transylvania experience, I sat stonefaced at jokes that might have merited a smile all else being equal.
♪ Parody Inspired by “Love Boat Theme”
