Hotel Transylvania (2012)

Sony Animation’s CGI farce “Hotel Transylvania” is light on plot and heavily features crap Auto-Tune music at the end that ought to make any sane person’s soul flinch, but its love for all tall tales of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Wolfman are infectious. It also helps that the film is marvelous looking, with every corner of the screen filled with fantastical, horrifying, and hilarious pop-art bright creatures. 

The story: Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) tries all in his power to keep his 118-year-old (teen years for a vampire) daughter safe in his castle, away from harm. The castle doubles as a hotel, a monster’s reprieve from the outside world of scary humans. Shocker, then, when a college-aged kid on a backpack adventure stumbles into the place and catches the daughter’s (Selena Gomez) eye. What’s a count to do? This is PG, so killing is moot. 

The alternatives fill up the story, which runs dry. But I was busy eyeing how characters move, bounce off each other, and fall apart in the case of Frankenstein. B

Dinner with Schmucks (2010) and Bad Teacher (2011)

Nothing bores me more than a comedy that promises a nasty good romp, but delivers a dull time and a feel-good ending. In “Dinner for Schmucks,” Paul Rudd is an office drone eyeing life with the big suits upstairs. The price: He must invite a “loser” to a dinner party so the guy can be ridiculed. Rudd’s Ted’s pick is Barry (Steve Carell), a loner who makes intricate dioramas using dead mice. Directed by Jay Roach, “Dinner” is mush. Ted is so freakin' nice we never doubt where he’ll stand. Barry is played as a ridiculous punch line that we’re asked to sympathize with. I didn’t. In “Bad Teacher,” Cameron Diaz is Elizabeth Halsey, a money-grubbing brat who must support herself by teaching middle school. Halsey is written as a dullard with no spark of hidden magic that makes the viewer hate himself for loving the title weasel. “Bad Santa” made me squirm with glee. Here, I yawned. Jason Segal shrugs through his role as a smitten gym teacher, and Justin Timberlake all but erases himself as a rich dweeb. Brit actress Lucy Punch steals both movies as wildly differing antagonists, a crazed stalker and a grating educator, respectively. “Dinner”: C. “Bad”: C-.