Hotel Transylvania 2 - C

Rated PG, 89 minutes

You become extremely hesitant when comedy veteran Adam Sandler grabs his pals to make an animated movie, thinking it might be "Grown Ups" in comic form. Admittedly, Sandler and company are a little - gulp - easier to take in animated form, and in 2012 "Hotel Transylvania" became a big hit, so he brought them back for more in the sweet but flimsy, scattershot "Hotel Transylvania 2," which offers little surprises from the first. Hotel Transylvania has gone through several changes since Johnny (Andy Samberg) first stumbled onto it: the hotel is now open to human guests, Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Johnny have a young son named Dennis (Asher Blinkoff), whose lack of any vampire abilities worries his grandfather, Dracula (Sandler). When Johnny and Mavis consider moving out of Transylvania to raise Dennis elsewhere, his "Vam-pa" puts him through "monster-in-training" hoping he gain his fangs to become the monster that Dracula has always hoped he'd be. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who directed the first film, and co-written by Sandler and his "SNL" cohort Robert Smigel, the thin "Hotel Transylvania 2" should most please the young ones, who'll enjoy the cute monsters but likely won't get most of the trademark Sandler potty humor: it's essentially a string of sight gags and non-sequitur humor that would make Seth MacFarland very happy. Much like a "Family Guy" episode, it's a little all-over-the-place in terms of storytelling and stuffed with many familiar voices from Sandler's crew: Kevin James (Frankenstein), David Spade (The Invisible Man), Steve Buscemi (Wolfman) as well as Samberg, not to mention comedy legend Mel Brooks as Dracula's father (is that really possible?) who's an inspired choice given his "Young Frankenstein" roots but he's given little do, appearing only in the last act for a few minutes (and there are many other fine comics such as Rob Riggle, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman and Keegan Michael-Key who are wasted as well). Much like a live-action Sandler film, you throw a bunch of stuff out, most of it doesn't work, with only a handful of truly funny jokes or gags that really work (the zombie bell boys and Blobby the green blob among them). The good thing, while it's not Disney it's also not tripe like "Grown Ups" or "Jack and Jill" so on that note, the sloppy, crowd-pleasing "Hotel Transylvania 2" is a harmless yet forgettable animated diversion. Call it a win of sorts for Sandler, who's live-action stuff has been tanking of late.