‘Hotel Transylvania 3’ is placid yet watchable

There are many things I want to say about ‘Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation’ but I am afraid they will sound all wrong. I want to say: Nothing really happens in this movie. I want to say: The humour was as it was, the characters were as they were. I really want to say: The film was unbelievably predictable; if you caught its trailer, you already know its beginning, middle and end. Yet, I would watch it again.

It is not an easy thing for a film to be all of the above and also be far from boring. It’s convenient to think that this happens to a production by accident, but I suspect that there is a lot of work, a lot of adjusting and careful weighing that goes into getting a movie to be just so, without being — in the words of our favourite vamp — “Bleh bleh-bleh bleh.”

In the film, Mavis decides that it’s high time the family stops working together, in order to actually spend time with each other. A surprise cruise to the Bermuda Triangle — which, when envisioned by director Genndy Tartakovsky, is obviously a triangle in the middle of the ocean, with a heap of shipwreck at its centre — is Mavis’ choice of vacay, and we giggle with delight as an always sarcastic Count Drac climbs aboard, muttering to himself, “Wow, it sounds like everything we can already do at our hotel.”

While Drac falls in love with the murderous great-granddaughter of an old foe, Mavis and Johnny go on dates; Frank, Griffin, and Wayne make some terrible, terrible jokes (“He might be from Egypt, but you’re in de-nial”); and Dennis and Winnie sneak the massive, unfortunately-named family pup, Tinkles, onboard.

If you come to ‘Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation’, hoping to be dazzled you will probably leave disappointed. Pizzazz is to this film what sunlight is to its protagonists. But perhaps there are those films that manage to do, somewhat quietly and warmly, what the dazzlers cannot — you rather find yourself wanting to slip into its folds, to dig your toes into the deserted island’s sandy shores, to simply be with its characters in the scrumptious, perpetually-starlit places they inhabit.

Like its predecessors, ‘Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation’ is — simply put — chill. As Johnny would say, “It just rolls, you know.”

Yet to roll but not be carried away is no walk in the park. At its centre, the film has a carefully curated oasis of niceness that is never too sweet or too loud. Its characters are often not doing much even as they appear onscreen. There are no lessons to be learned or large obstacles to be overcome — you know that the famjam will always come through, and you are somehow strangely content to watch them plonk themselves down on deckchairs and liberally apply moonscreen.