Hooray, more movies! I was super pumped to see this, because I loved the first movie, where Dracula has to get over his (quite sensible) fear of humans when his daughter Mavis falls in love with one, and I liked the second one too, where Dracula has to get over his worry that his grandson Dennis may not grow up to be a bat. In the third one, Dracula’s feeling a bit lonely, so Mavis books a family cruise to get him feeling better. It’s hard enough for Dracula to leave the hotel for monsters he’s run for a century, and he doesn’t really want to think about how lonely he is, but he does love his family and his friends, including werewolves, invisible men, mummies, and Blobby. He’s caught completely by surprise, though, when he finds himself falling in love with the cruise ship’s captain, Ericka–but she’s hiding the kind of family secret that will keep them apart.

The Hotel Transylvania movies are very ridiculous and very funny, and it’s nice to see Dracula, known generally in literary history as, you know, not a great guy, being a jokey grandad. (It’s especially great when he parades around proudly in a floral shirt and short shorts, but not as great as when Dracula’s own father, Vlad, parades around in his much tinier swimmers. I LOVE Vlad, though, because he’s voiced by Mel Brooks, who wrote and starred in all my favourite stupid comedies from the 80s.) The series makes the most out of monster jokes, and since everyone’s basically immortal all kinds of hijinks can happen. There’s heaps of excellent general comedy, and the message is probably “don’t judge other people just because they’re different”, like the other two were probably also saying, but who cares? We all just want to see giant underwater monsters rampaging, and laugh ourselves silly over Dennis sneaking his house-sized dog onboard. And that’s exactly what we got, and will hopefully get again in a fourth movie…and a fifth…