Hotel Transylvania

The characters and story, forged by six different directors and many more writers over a six-year-production stint, leave little room for Tartakovsky tricks and tics.

Comedy gothic isn't exactly novel, and frankly there is a sense here of a movie coasting along on Halloween hype-marketing, without providing as many laughs and ideas as it really could have done.

No one does saccharine like Adam Sandler. The man can be sharp, angry and funny - but when he lays on the sweetness, it's like drowning in an avalanche of Tate & Lyle.

Castle horror versus theme-park tourism. No real winners.

The film gives gothic multiculturalism a good, or at least a giddily digimated, name.

Somehow dull and exhausting all at once, and the central concept (monsters who fear humans) was explored with far more wit and elegance in Pixar's timeless Monsters, Inc.

Hotel Transylvania isn't a brilliant animated feature, but it is a consistently entertaining one with Sandler's trademark silliness mixed with sweetness.

The way this collection of monster misfits tackle both each other and the threat of human invasion has the right degree of wit and sophistication to amuse adults whilst being zany and slapstick enough to hold children's attention.

As a straight up monster movie, this film could have had a lot of fun diving further into the stereotypes... and then extending the confrontation that occurs at the end. Instead it's weighed down by the teen romance and need to conceal Jonathan.

The movie is hardly top-notch stuff.