Review: Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)

As I have reiterated numerous times, I like Adam Sandler, most people don't like him and I will happily admit he has made some terrible films but Hotel Transylvania is one of my favourites so the sequel had to be watched.

It took me ages to eventually watch Hotel Transylvania, but I was surprised at how much I loved it, so I was really looking forward to the sequel.

Hotel Transylvania 2 follows on from the first one with Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg) married with a half human half vampire baby, however Dracula (Adam Sandler) is worried that his monster side hasn't come through yet.  To rectify the situation, Dracula sends Mavis to visit her human in-laws and recruits his monster friends to try to encourage Dennis' evil side to come out.

You didn't warn me the first few scenes would make me cry! I'm deep in the middle of a wedding hotel room drama so anything sweet and wedding related sets me off right now. Watching Dracula and Mavis' sweet moments made me do a bit of an ugly cry.

Straight up, this is not as good as the first one.  The jokes aren't as good and the story is pretty poor, however when it does pull a funny, it was really funny.  I laughed out loud countless times and was thoroughly entertained, no naps in this film!! I left my adult self at the door and spent an hour and a half being a kid again, laughing at fart jokes and trying to work out the which voice belongs to who from various Adam Sandler movies.  I was gobsmacked to find Nick Offerman yet again, that man is literally in everything...ever!  Also, did we know that he is married to the awesome Megan Mullally, why did I not know this?!  I would love to be a fly on the wall in that house!

You also didn't warn me that Nick freaking Offerman was in this! We need to talk. Also I had no idea until now that Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are married. That's awesome on so many levels!

The animation is fantastic as well, the attention to detail never fails to amaze me in modern animation.  Particularly the scenes with big group, such as the birthday party, there are soo many other things happening in the background, I want to watch it again and again to catch them all.

I really enjoyed the story, although this is another case of the sequel not being quite so good. The jokes were okay, but not laugh out loud for me, other than one moment which struck a weird funny bone for me. That moment when both families are having a big meal together, and there's that phantom of the opera styled guy playing the organ. Someone says something a bit controversial and the organ guy just shouts 'AWKWARD' and I don't know why, but it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen!

Don't overthink it and you'll love it!

Definitely worth a watch, but I prefer the original!

Review: Pixels (2015)

Gamer nerds, unite! Okay, that was a little lame, sorry. But seriously, I’m all in for a movie that celebrates being a gamer. It’s just taken me a while to get round to watching this one. When I first saw the trailer for Pixels, I though, this is one of those movies that’s going to be terrible, but a little bit awesome at the same time. As the terrible reviews flooded in, my enthusiasm died a little, but I still wanted to give it a chance.  I hadn't read any reviews so I had no idea what to expect....

Pixels (2015) starts off in the summer of 1982, and when a new arcade opens up in town, friends Brenner (Adam Sandler) and Cooper (Kevin James) race over to master the games. Whilst there they meet Ludlow (Josh Gad) who’s in love with Lady Lisa, the main star of the game Dojo Quest. After working his way through the ranks, Brenner goes head to head with Eddie (Peter Dinklage) in a game of Donkey Kong. The host announces that footage of the competition will be sent into space by NASA, and consequently, an alien race treats the footage as a declaration of war, and use video games to attack Earth.

It’s a pretty silly plot, there’s no moving around that one, but it’s a fun one at the very least! I would class myself as an Adam Sandler fan, but I enjoyed this a lot more than the last movies I saw of his, both Grown Ups. Admittedly, I think I’m just a few years too young to fully appreciate Pixels. I played Pacman and Donkey Kong, but remastered versions on early generation games consoles, and they were the only game characters I actually recognised. There’s definitely a lot of nostalgia here for 80’s gamers though!  I recognised more from watching Wreck it Ralph than from actual video games (I was more of a Barbie kid!!).  I will readily admit that I am a huge Adam Sandler fan and I to disagree with Allie on this one because Grown Ups (the first one) was awesome and this didn't even come into the same league (it was pretty much on par with Grown Ups 2 - Grown Ups 2 was horrendous, at least Pixels had a plot!).

The visuals were a pretty sight to see, and I reckon they would only be better on the big screen. The final Donkey Kong scene was nothing short of awesome, and even though the trailer already showed it, I loved the idea of using coloured Mini Cooper’s for Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde!  Agreed, the visuals were amazing and the Mini Coopers were great (but how did they know they were going to need them -just another of the little niggles that bothered me throughout!)

As much as I enjoyed this, it certainly wasn’t without it’s flaws. I lost interest in the plot several times, and a few of the characters got on my nerves a little. Why did Peter Dinklage have to put on a ‘douchebag’ voice throughout the entire movie? It just wasn’t necessary. Also, I realise the soundtrack was from the 80’s but the whole Centipede battle scene would have been 100x more awesome if it was backed by Knife Party’s Centipede. Look it up on YouTube, and please internet, make this happen for me. Oh, and spoiler alert, but if you’re going to cast Sean Bean in your movie, in a military role no less, kill him off! Wasted opportunity there, Sandler. YES! I know this film was completely unrealistic and unbelievable but I could not get my head around Kevin James being President, it was so irritating.

All in all, I was really disappointed, I wanted to love it but I just didn't!  It pushed the unrealistic too far and wasn't even remotely funny....at all! (that's hard for me to say about a Sandler film)

Not the best movie out there by a long shot, but give me Adam Sandler over James Franco any day! 

Disappointed in Mr Sandler...sort it out man!

Review: Blended (2014)

I know this isn't necessarily a popular opinion these days BUT I love Adam Sandler - I think it may be partly nostalgia having grown up watching Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore so I always make time to watch his latest offerings (even if they just seem to be getting worse!).  After the success of T-pairing Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, this had to be good, right?!

Jim (Adam Sandler) and Lauren (Drew Barrymore) are set up on a disastrous blind date (at Hooters) and then by some ridiculous plot point they end up in Africa together with their respective children.  What follows is typical Sandler comedy (and cameos) but all wrapped up in a disappointing and stupid plot. 

Admittedly, many of Sandler's movies tend to have stupid plots (Mr Deeds, Don't mess with the Zohan) but this seemed different somehow.  It felt like they decided what was going to happen then had to come up with a way to get to that point! (FYI it involves ringing a complete stranger and asking him for his holiday and said stranger being happy to oblige WTF!).  Sidebar: I get the feeling that my age and the fact that since taking up this blog I have started watched more good films instead of relying solely on Adam Sandler for entertainment has impacted on my love of AS films.  I have outgrown them!

The children were all equally irritating and completely lacking in any kind of character development and Wendy Mclendon-Covey is wasted as Lauren's best friend.  After her performance in Bridesmaids I expected better things from her.  I also have no idea what this guy was doing, why he was even in the film and why someone, somewhere actually thought it was funny...

The whole film felt quite similar to 'Just go with it' although the stories were pretty different (I actually found that one funny!).  This one just didn't sit with me, a few parts were mildly amusing at best and I hoped and hoped for a laugh out loud moment only to be disappointed.

Pretty much a disappointment across the board.