YMMV / Hotel Transylvania 2

• And You Thought It Would Fail: When it became obvious that the film wasn't being screened for critics, some folks began to fear a disastrous stinker, and perhaps not unreasonably, given the critical failure of Pixels, Sandler's other movie released earlier that year. Instead, by the time the reviews had settled over the weekend, the film's critical percentage was actually better on Rotten Tomatoes than that of the original. (Though with rather less reviews to work with.) More importantly, the film earned the best weekend opening for any September film. (The original Hotel Transylvania was the previous record-holder.) With Halloween being the next month, it became perfect momentum to continue with.
• Award Snub: It's not surprising that Selena Gomez was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award for the film, but it is that Adam Sandler wasn't. At the very least, the film did win for Favorite Animated Movie, which Sandler himself accepted.
• Broken Aesop: Dracula and Vlad gradually accept that Dennis hasn't taken on any vampiric traits, with Dracula ultimately assuring his grandson that he loves him exactly the way he is. In the climax, Dennis is revealed to be a vampire after all, meaning that Dracula and Vlad both get exactly what they were previously portrayed as wrong for wanting.
• Broken Base: The now canon pairing of Mavis and Jonathan. Some think they are cute together; others, usually those who consider Jonathan The Scrappy, can't comprehend what Mavis sees in him.
• Contested Sequel: Some fans thought that it uses too much credit for Sandler's writing, which makes it more like Eight Crazy Nights meets The Nightmare Before Christmas.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A child falling off a high place to his death? Horrifying. Dracula intentionally throwing Dennis off a tall tower and taking the whole thing very casually because he's convinced that Dennis will be fine? Hilarious.
• Designated Hero: Drac's portrayed as the hero of the movie despite the fact that he conspires with Johnny in order to get rid of Mavis so that he can spent time with Dennis. It also doesn't help that he does some very horrible and rather questionable things in the movie (i.e. convincing Jonathan to take Mavis to California so that he can test Dennis if he's a vampire, throwing Dennis off a very tall building to see if he can fly and finally persuading Johnny's family to disguise themselves as monsters when Vlad shows up to visit him.)
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Although the ending is perfectly happy, with the villains either being defeated or doing a Heel–Face Turn and the main characters no longer having to move away, it can feel a little off, because the only reason for the ending turning out the way it did is the coincidence of Dennis turning out to actually be a vampire after all. So yeah, everything turned out fine, but only because the heroes got lucky in a way that contradicts the rest of the movie, which up to this point was about Dracula having to accept that Dennis is not a vampire.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The scenario for when Dennis unlocks his vampire powers after seeing Winnie get knocked down by Bela is a lot similar to how Wataru Kurenai unlocked his Emperor form. If that wasn't enough, remember that Kiva has a vampire motif and that Dennis and Wateru both have Adorkable human fathers.
  • Linda's voice actor Megan Mullaly voices Aunt Gayle in Bob's Burgers, who has a sister - Bob's wife - named Linda.
• Ho Yay: Continued from the original — the madness starts when Drac and Jonathan begin conspiring how to stop Mavis from separating them.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Hey, dude man! I'M A DUDE MAN!"
  • The sandstorm summoning scene became used as a joke about comments that start flamewars in Latin America.
• Moe: Just looking at Dennis will make you want to hug him.
• The Scrappy: Linda. She is highly disliked by most of the fandom because of her Innocently Insensitive approach towards Mavis and the other monsters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Both Vlad and Bela. They only show up in the last third, Vlad's relationship with Dracula is only touched upon, and Bela only exists to cause the climax, with no explanation for what he and the other bat-monsters even are or why Vlad lives in a cave with them.
  • Jonathan as well. Nothing much comes of his preferring the hotel and thinking Mavis is in the wrong beyond a single call out to Mavis at the end that doesn't even get a response and he doesn't get to participate in the final battle (in the film, anyway. The novelization gives him more to do).
  • Wanda and Eunice. They are dubbed by famous actresses and it would be interesting to explore their relationships with their respective husbands and with the other characters as well but, as in the first movie, they get very few scenes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • There is a single conversation that mentions Dracula used to be a very sensitive child who took way longer than normal to grow his fangs, just like Dennis. We find out that Vlad finally made it happen by taking something Drac loved and turning it into something that terrified him, but not once is it mentioned what that thing was or how Vlad actually went about doing it. Dracula's horrified reaction to watching Vlad try to do it again with Dennis make this seem like a pretty big detail to brush over.
  • There is a deleted scene that does reveal that the thing that Dracula loved and later feared was a baby raccoon.
  • Most thought that rushing through Johnathan and Mavis' wedding was a really wasted opportunity as that premise alone could've been a sequel to itself and would've worked far better with the Vlad plot (as there would be no Dennis to make Vlad come around, making it harder to convince him that humans aren't all bad).
  • Several viewers felt that Dennis being revealed to have vampire abilities ruined the message, and that it would have been better if he had remained human.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Phantom of the Opera's look is a little more realistic than everyone else's cartoony dimensions.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Dracula. He's supposed to learn a lesson about accepting humans into his heart and having a human grandson. However, despite all his attempts to get Dennis to grow in his fangs and his generally overeager attitude over it, he always loved Dennis for who he is and only resorts to such extremes so Mavis won't move away. He also knows that neither Dennis nor Johnny want to move away either, a clear indicator that Dracula learned from his "safety over happiness" lesson from the first movie and is simultaneously trying to prevent Mavis from making everyone miserable.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mavis. She's supposed to be the one calling out Dracula for not accepting a human grandson, but she herself actively tries to steer Dennis away from monster culture. She also makes the decision to move to California without getting input from Johnny and Dennis, sacrificing their happiness for their safety...which is exactly what Dracula did to Mavis in the first movie. Not even Johnny's family harboring bigotry towards monsters or Dennis getting bullied by his cousins is enough to stop her. And despite putting Dennis' safety above all else, Mavis invites her grandfather to meet Dennis before they leave Transylvania, despite Dracula warning her five years prior that he hated humans much worse than Dracula did and would have eaten Johnny if he met him. Yes, Vlad redeems himself in the end, but Mavis knowingly risked getting her family killed. Not once does Mavis apologize or make amends for any of this, even though it arguably makes her far worse than Dracula.