Originally posted at the DL August 2016
I should probably start with the negative here. Y'know all those old, tired nagging wife tropes where dudes hang out and bitch about how tired they are and how weird having kids is and just seem completely beaten down by not being able to hang out and do irresponsible bachelor stuff forever? Yeah there's a lot of that here and it's annoying and distracting.
The basic story conflict is pretty hackey too, although that bothers me less. It's easy to read it as intentionally over the top because it fits with classic Vampire behavior to be obsessive and controlling, which balances out them just kinda letting Drac stretch all the vampire rules to their breaking point otherwise (like flying in direct sunlight for like 10 minutes of screen time.) His flaws are quirks and his emotional baggage and it works. Also helps sell us on him being sufficiently emotionally devastated by his wife's death to go into overdrive like that.
The core humor of the movie trends towards crazy immature and slapstick and hooonestly I kinda love it. I can't even remember most of them, it's just quick little split second sight gags or comments that immediately got a chuckle. Although there is one with a bit more setup.
<Frank> That man is Dracula!
<Bystander> Prove it!
<Drac> *uses the mind control eyes, gets him to break his coffee mug over his head*
<Bystander> Proceed.
But mostly they go more for the adorable here. Everything about Mavis? Cute as hell. The little werewolf girl? Cute as hell. The 118th birthday book? Cute as hell. Jonathan? Dorky as shit. In a cute as hell way.
Mmm. yeah I'm not sure what else to say. This movie could pretty easily have gone horribly wrong, but they really did good on playing down the Adam Sandler-y elements and really playing with the animation aspects. Re-reading on the movie reminded me that Genndy Tartakovsky pulled the movie out of the fire and cobbled it into something workable, and yeah that seems obvious in retrospect.
Oh shoot, I love the vampire transformation effects too. That feels important to mention for its own sake.
Rating- 7/10. A bit disposable, but pretty funny in the moment.
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