Hotel Transylvania debuted in theaters last night, and may be the leading film in the box office this weekend. It turns in an impressive performance that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike.

Hotel Transylvania is the latest animated film produced by Sony. It tells the story of Dracula who creates a seemingly secluded hotel for monsters designed to protect them from the hatred and destructiveness of human beings toward his kind, and particularly toward his young daughter. As the story develops, we learn that years ago Dracula’s wife was killed by an angry mob of humans. As a result, Dracula conceives of the hotel idea primarily to protect his daughter, and to surround her with their monstrous kind and to provide the seclusion and defensiveness provided by a haunted forest and zombie filled cemetery on the perimeter. Of course the best plans of Dracula are thwarted, which takes place when a young human traveler, Jonathan, stumbles across the hotel and unwittingly falls in love with Dracula’s daughter Mavis, who also falls for him. Dracula does his best to discourage Jonathan and his daughter, but eventually his monstrous hotel guests discover the presence of an allegedly dangerous human in their midst, which disturbs not only Dracula’s plans for his hotel, but also for his daughter’s budding romance and desires for freedom outside the hotel.

Hotel Transylvania is poised to do well with movie audiences. Somewhat surprisingly, even opening night at the late showing included the presence of many parents with young children, whose laughter throughout the film indicated that it was well received. The monster characters are well designed, with a representation that includes stylized (and copyright infringement avoiding) variations of Universal Studios classic creatures including not only Dracula, but also Frankenstein, the mummy, the wolfman, the invisible man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. In addition to these monsters we also see other monsters from the silver screen and popular culture such as Bigfoot. The presence of this vast array of monsters, and a scene where the creatures pursue Jonathan into a human town where a monster festival is going on filled with hundreds of “monster geeks,” provides evidence that monsters have moved beyond the monster kid and monster geek subculture of previous generations, to become mainstream pop culture icons. Classic monster fans will be pleased to see variations of the creatures that first haunted the silver screen almost a hundred years ago are still delighting audiences today.

There was some concern about Adam Sandler’s connection to this film prior to its release, who serves as executive producer, and voices Dracula. The actor has seen a number of flops at the box office in his live action films, but his voice characterizations strike the right chord, and to whatever extent he was involved in the creative process in contributing to this film he has found formula for animated success with this film.

I highly recommend Hotel Transylvania as a great holiday film in connection with Halloween, and as a great tribute to monster culture and contribution to good animated films as well.