The Haunted Mansion
The first movie to be retrofitted from a Disney theme-park ride was "The Country Bears" -- 88 minutes of claw-your-eyes-out animatronic "fun." Next came "Pirates of the Caribbean," and who knew the addition of the wonder ingredient Depp-O could turn a crass marketing concept into such a high-spirited summer lark? Flush with the success of "Caribbean," Disney has now unleashed "The Haunted Mansion," based on the long-established attractions of the same name at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. It stars Eddie Murphy, and it is spectacularly average. Neither an inspired reimagining nor a painful dud, "Mansion" splits the difference between the two earlier movies: As directed by Rob Minkoff ("Stuart Little"), the film is an efficient, reasonably enjoyable factory product that should scare a 9-year-old just enough and be gone from his or her memory by dinnertime.
As the ride itself is a pastiche of every ghost-story prop and plotline since campfires were invented, so the movie calls upon the spirits of many, many haunted-house movies past. If you've seen James Whale's 1932 "The Old Dark House" or Abbott and Costello in "Hold That Ghost" (1943) or -- my personal touchstone -- Don Knotts in "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966), you've seen "The Haunted Mansion." But your kids haven't, and Disney knows that.
And so we get Murphy, in the latest of his toothy family-friendly roles, as Jim Evers, a real estate agent whose ambitions are keeping him from spending time with wife and partner Sara (Marsha Thomason) and kids Michael (Marc John Jefferies) and Megan (Aree Davis). On the way to a long-postponed family weekend, Jim has to stop to case a new listing: a hulking gothic edifice with a cemetery for a backyard. The tear-down potential is great, but "Haunted Mansion" doesn't go that way.
It goes inside, of course, where the master of the house, Edward Gracey (Nathaniel Parker), dresses in Dorian gray and seems a little vaporous about the gills. So do the butler, Ramsley (Terence Stamp), the footman (Wallace Shawn), and the housemaid (Dina Waters). I haven't even mentioned the crystal ball in the attic that contains the green, glowing head of Jennifer Tilly.
Edward takes one look at Sara and is convinced she is the reincarnation of his long-lost beloved Elizabeth, whom he couldn't marry for reasons the movie is too busy or too graceful to specify. Nor can I blame him, since Thomason, a trained British actress, has a delicate beauty that outclasses everything else here. No matter; Jim and the children have to rush around and find a key that opens a trunk that contains a letter that discloses the true villain of the piece.
Like "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Mansion" indulges every cliche of its genre, like the bust on the desk whose movable head opens the door to the secret passageway. That should be part of the fun, but it all feels as rote as Murphy's performance. The fluid editing, Mark Mancina's Danny Elfmanesque score, and some nicely calibrated special effects keep the film moving along, and Disneyland freaks will enjoy ticking off the bits of the ride that have made it on-screen, but there's none of the wild-card energy Depp and Geoffrey Rush brought to "Pirates." With his sepulchral stare and mortician's intonations, Stamp tries -- oh, does he try -- but he can't lift the movie up to his level.
Is it scary? In a theme-park sort of way: i.e., lots of "boo!" moments but nothing that really sticks. The only scene that might induce some bed-wetting is when Jim and Megan try to get the key from a mausoleum full of shambling corpses (it's like the "Thriller" video with better effects). But it's worth noting that neither of the kids seem particularly distressed by anything that transpires in "Haunted Mansion." Maybe that's bad acting -- or maybe they've seen "The Cat in the Hat" and already know what true terror is.
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