On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 47/169 |
Max Braden |
There isn't much unpredictable here, and it's not as good as Toy Story for showing off the collection of characters, but I laughed a bunch due to quick editing for comedic effect. |
Imagine you’re the only one in elementary school that doesn’t have High School Musical lunchbox. You’d want a High School Musical lunchbox, right? You’d beg your mom over and over again for a High School Musical lunchbox, right? Then, once you got your High School Musical lunchbox, you’d bring it to school and proudly show it off to your friends, fitting in amongst your peers at last.
That’s kinda like Sony Pictures. For years, they were the only kid on the block without some sort of animation group. Everyone else was making good money off of animation – from the Paramount/DreamWorks team, the Disney/Pixar team and the Fox/Blue Sky Studios team. Even Warner Bros. had gotten into the mix with The Polar Express and the Oscar-winning Happy Feet.
Clearly, something had to change. Sony Pictures Animation launched their inaugural film title in September of 2006 with Open Season, a film that featured the (insert sarcasm here) luminous voice-acting talents of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher. It was a moderate success, with a not-bad 47% rating on RottenTomatoes and over $187 million in the worldwide box office. Pretty good for your first outing, I’d say (unless you’re Pixar, in which case that would suck balls).
Hotel Transylvania seems like an effort on their part to follow in the DreamWorks/Shrek model and clump together a movie with iconic literary characters (this time, from classic horror stories and fables) along with snarky pop-culture references. The plot itself deals with a group of well-known monsters (Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula, etc.) that are hiding out in a hotel on the outskirts of Transylvania now that 21st century has, alas, made them irrelevant.
Enter Simon Van Helsing, dashing young monster hunter. He does the one thing that a monster hunter should never do: he falls in love with the enemy . . . namely, Dracula’s daughter, Mavis. It’s sort of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with the sexes reversed. In the end, Simon and Mavis try to end the “Hatfield and McCoy-like” standoff that’s existed for eons between monsters and humans.
Will they succeed? I don’t know . . . but given that Sony is probably looking for this film to bring in a couple hundred million dollars across theatrical, home video and licensing, I think I have a pretty good idea of what transpires. (Jason Lee/BOP)
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