It had a lot of potential...

Rating: 5/10 (14 October 2012)

I saw this earlier today, and I was a bit underwhelmed. The film certainly has an interesting premise - it's the relatively unused "monsters are afraid of humans" bit we saw in Monsters, Inc., though not handled nearly as well.
The film tries to be a comedy, and fails in that regard. There are one or two memorable jokes, but most of the humor is relegated firmly to the "fart joke" territory. There's also the mandatory awful musical number at the end which serves no purpose but to remind you that the creators were aiming this at children and only children (I actually got up and left the theater at this point).
However, my biggest gripe with the film was the total lack of pacing. Not in the story, but in the animation. Visually, everything just moves way too fast on the screen. The animators seem to have absolutely no sense of timing for comic effect - while you're still trying to work out the previous visual gag, the next one has already come and gone. Maybe you'd have to see it to understand my meaning, but the animation just needs to slow the hell down. That alone might have saved this movie.
That said, the film *does* have some redeeming qualities. Most have criticized the story as being too cliché or predictable, and while it was to an extent, it didn't bother me. I found Mavis's character and her relationship with Dracula to be one of the more compelling aspects of the film, and I can't help but feel like they would have ended up with a better movie if they'd focused on this more and left the fart jokes at the door (though admittedly, not one that would appeal to little kids).
Unless you're really itching for something new to see, I probably wouldn't spend the money, though I suppose it's also not the *worst* vampire movie coming out this year...