Overview: Welcome to Hotel Transylvania, Dracula’s lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up and no humans are allowed. The Drac-Pack is back in this hilarious comedy starring Drac, Mavis, Johnny and your favorite monsters in an all-new adventure! Join Drac, Mavis and all of your favorite monsters for fun and adventure on the high seas as they embark on a monster cruise vacation! Reunite with your favorite monsters for an adventure that presents Drac with a terrifying task.

Includes: Hotel Transylvania, Hotel Transylvania 2, Hotel Transylvania 3 and Hotel Transylvania: Transformation.

DVD Verdict: We open on Hotel Transylvania (2012), and with Dracula, who operates a high-end resort away from the human world, and who goes into overprotective mode when a boy discovers the resort and falls for the count’s teenage daughter.

From the outside, Hotel Transylvania may look like a clichéd and typical aim-at-the-kids-mooch-off-the-adults animated film with pop music, celebrities, cute characters, and plenty of childish humor. It may look like a film that doesn’t strive for the heights of Pixar and instead aims for the likes of Dreamworks’ lesser efforts. And from a film buff’s perspective, it may look like an animated movie with known production hell that was tossed at us to just collect some cash and lessen the losses.

But, Hotel Transylvania actually delivers. Surprisingly, and in many departments. It did not just succeed in pleasing the kids, but it actually entertains the adults with quick zany Tex Avery humor with very minimal downtime. Similar to the original Madagascar flick that remains DreamWorks’ most consistently entertaining franchise, this movie rapidly fires jokes high, low, and direct to catch the kids, teenagers, and adults off-guard. They took the classic father/growing daughter concept and gave it a clever monster twist that allows for plenty of creativity.

Next up is Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015), where Dracula and his friends try to bring out the monster in his half human, half vampire grandson in order to keep Mavis from leaving the hotel.

Mavis and Jonathan (again voiced by Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg) marry and a year later they have a child that Drac himself (voiced, as always, by Adam Sandler) names Dennis. Nearly five years pass and Dennis still hasn’t become a vampire, so Drac tries with his friends Frank, Wayne, Griffin (voiced by Kevin James, Steve Buscemi and David Spade), Murray and Blobby to make a vampire out of Dennis but all their attempts fail.

So Drac sends Dennis to the summer camp where he refined his vampire abilities but after a video that accidentally ends on the Internet Mavis is enraged with her dad because he can’t accept a human nephew and after Drac’s father Vlad (voice by Mel Brooks) comes by surprise, Drac will do his best to save his friends and make humans co-exist pacifically with the monsters.

Then we get Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) where Count Dracula and company participate in a cruise for sea-loving monsters, unaware that their boat is being commandeered by the monster-hating Van Helsing family.

For me, Summer Vacation is a fun and entertaining addition to the Hotel Transylvania franchise. The animation is vibrant and colorful, the characters are lovable and well-developed, and the story is filled with humor and heart. The film follows Dracula, Mavis and their family as they go on a luxury monster cruise ship, where they meet new monsters and Mavis makes a plan to give Dracula a chance to find true love.

As always, the voice acting is spot-on, with Sandler, Gomez, and Samberg delivering great performances throughout. The movie also has a good balance of action, comedy and emotion, which is what we have come to expect, but taking them outside of their safe haven hotel could have been risky; but, luckily, it, for the most part, worked.

Lastly we get Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania (2022) where after one experiment, Johnny turns into a monster and everyone else becomes human. Now it has to be seen whether they will be able to reverse this experiment!

The story here is that Count Dracula plans to retire from running the Hotel Transylvania and have his daughter and her husband run it. But the young man’s excitement gives Dracula second thoughts which then causes a mix-up and the story takes them to the jungle of central South America to find a special crystal that is needed to repair the magical ray gun.

Or something pretty close to that! The animated action is always manic, most of it is funny and entertaining and all the voice acting is top notch. But there is no big message here, just fun entertainment for those of us who like this sort of thing.

Official HOTEL TRANSLYVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA – Extended Preview