Grossing over $48 million on its opening weekend, Hotel Transylvania 2 is one of the most successful movies of the entire September. An animated movie marketed towards kids once again surprises everyone, and this time, it’s not from Disney or Pixar.

The movie begins with the wedding of the vampire girl, Mavis, and the human Johnny. Mavis and Johnny have a child named Dennis one year later who is half vampire and half human. Mavis’ dad, Dracula, becomes worried around Dennis’s fifth birthday that Dennis is human instead of vampire because Dennis shows no signs of growing fangs.

So for the rest of the film, Dracula tries desperately to get Dennis to grow his fangs. The perfect opportunity finally arises when Mavis and Johnny decide to visit Johnny’s parents and leaves Dennis under the care of Dracula.

With his gang of monsters, Dracula first takes Dennis to a summer camp just for vampires where Dracula himself learned to be a vampire. But the summer camp has changed drastically and is now a lot safer.

However, Dracula believes that Dennis needs to have his fangs scared out, so Dracula drops Dennis from the top of a tall tower. This scene can be seen in many of the trailers for the movie. Unfortunately, Dennis’ fangs still do not appear.

This attempt and subsequent attempts at trying to get Dennis to grow fangs not only fails, but also creates a lot of tension between the whole family. Both Mavis and Dracula want the best for Dennis, but Mavis’ approach as an overly protective mother is completely opposite of that of Dracula’s.

All of the creative monsters and animation make the whole movie enjoyable to any kid near Halloween, but  the dynamic of the family is one of the reasons why the movie is so enjoyable for people of any age.

But even aside from the family aspect, the movie is full of humor. Combined with the free-flowing animation, all of the characters actions and facial expressions are able to be exaggerated for the sake of comedy.

But instead of having comedy take up the entire movie, Hotel Transylvania 2 succeeds in working in humor with an actual plot and even a lesson to be learned by the end.

While some jokes do get old, especially ones that carry over from the original Hotel Transylvania movie, the movie still has at least something to make everyone laugh.

While the wacky style and story may not suit every movie-goer, this movie is definitely is a good option for a whole family movie.