When something terrible happens to someone you love, it may force you to be more protective of your loved ones.
Hotel Transylvania begins by showing Dracula “Drac” (Adam Sandler) raising his daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), to be fearful of humans. At the same time, Drac is building a huge hotel in Transylvania to keep his daughter and monster friends safe from the humans.
But Mavis is starting to get curious about the outside world as she gets older. Drac does his best to shield her, but a human named Johnny (Andy Samberg) ends up coming to the hotel. Johnny and Mavis instantly “zing” and start to fall in love.
Drac can try to keep the two apart, but he then realizes that not all humans are bad and reluctantly accepts Johnny into his family. This story shows parents that they can try to protect their kids, but trust that they raised their children to make good decisions. Drac allows Mavis to make her own decisions, and one of those is being with Johnny.
A few other takeaways to discuss with the kids:
- Don’t judge a person before you know them. Drac judged Johnny right away because he was a human. He feared every human because a mob of them killed his wife.
- Never pretend to be someone you’re not. Johnny pretended to be a monster when he first met Mavis and the other monsters in the hotel. He thought everyone was dressed in costume at first. He continued pretending even after he found out they were real monsters.
- Fix your mistakes. Drac made a mistake by getting rid of Jonny and he went after him to apologize.
- Live life to the fullest. This is Johnny’s motto and it has served him well. He loves going to new places and is always down to try new things. You never know what you will like or not like if you don’t try something new.
Movie-inspired activities
- Make scream cheese with this recipe by Feast of Starlight.
- Have a family costume party and dress up like characters from the film.
- Try this recipe for Vampire Cookies by Delish. All you need is chocolate chip cookie dough, vanilla frosting, red food coloring, slivered almonds and mini marshmallows.
- Print out these coloring pages of characters from the movie from Mom Junction.
- Use this recipe by Pillsbury to make Crescent Mummy Dogs.
- Make Hotel Transylvania bat garland using the tutorial by Kidspot.
