When it was first announced that Adam Sandler and his friends were going to be providing the voice cast for the upcoming animated monster movie Hotel Transylvania, I didn’t panic. Even though Adam Sandler movies have been traveling on an increasingly downward slope to the point where he’s now one of the most embarrassing figures in Hollywood, and even though these are the guys who are responsible for the crime against humanity that was Grown Ups, I didn’t throw a fit. And that’s mainly because the movie is being directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who has done pretty universally amazing animated work on things like Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Surely he wouldn’t mess this movie up, right? And Sandler and his buddies won’t have near as much opportunity to goof off, throw a bunch of half-baked, juvenile crap at the screen, and call it a day when working in the world of animation. So there wasn’t much to fear here, right?

Well, I must have either missed the fact or blocked out the fact that Miley Cyrus is going to be voicing the character of Dracula’s daughter Mavis, because now I’m really starting to get scared about this movie. There are few things in the world I find more gratingly incompetent than the sound of Disney actresses trying to deliver comedy on Disney TV shows. If Cyrus brings the comedic sensibilities of Hannah Montana to the big screen, where comedic delivery means shouting things as loudly as you can, and comedic timing means delivering a quip and then mugging for the (now non-existent) camera, Hotel Transylvania could be a disaster of the highest order. Tartakovsky certainly has his work cut out for him with the cast that’s been assembled, will his talent for animation be able to overcome?

Check out the full picture of Mavis after the break.

So far, after seeing this shot of Mavis that Entertainment Weekly has released to promote the film, I’m still not sure. It doesn’t tell us all that much about the design approach that he’s going to be taking on this project. Mavis, from this one shot, just kind of looks like a slightly goth, regular teenage girl. Nothing too revealing.

The story of this film focuses on a regular guy (voiced by Andy Samberg) who wanders into a hotel owned by Dracula and subsequently falls in love with his daughter. So, by design, Mavis and the boy are probably going to be the most plain-looking characters in the film, with Dracula and his monster buddies providing the wacky comic relief. Maybe they should have debuted somebody else first, like Sandler’s Dracula or Kevin James’ Frankenstein monster, to really give us a look at the design of this film and how much fun it’s going to be. I’ll still reserve my judgment on this one, but I’m growing more weary of it every day.