Haunted Mansion, The
Pluto Nash didn’t rocket him back to the stars, Daddy Day Care did nothing to nurture his career and Haunted Mansion scares no life back into Eddie Murphy. Impressive though are silver screen newcomers Nathaniel Parker and Marsha Thomason.
Disney’s The Haunted Mansion is the mega corporation’s third recent attempt at reversing their formula, by creating a big screen adaptation of their most popular theme park attractions. The first being Country Bears, but the best of course being the hugely succesful Pirates of the Caribbean, grossing over 300 million in the box office and still climbing despite it’s recent DVD release. Suffice it to say, the two are in different classes.
Jim and Sara Evers (Murphy and Thomason) are a husband and wife real estate team in Louisiana. Although good intentioned, Jim tends to put his work before his wife and two children. Feeling guilty about missing his wedding anniversary, Jim promises to take Sara and the kids to a favorite lake retreat to make ammends. Just before leaving for all this family fun, Sara gets a call to come take a look at Gracey Manor, a giant vicotrian mansion set in the backwood bayou area of New Orleans. Initially refusing the offer, Jim pressures her to stop for 20 minutes to make an impression, then leave, but instead get caught up in a curse and a mystery that ultimately brings the family closer together.
This is a tired, afterschool special plot. For anyone that has read up on the history and story behind the theme park ride, they will know that the movie had a lot of potential, but was not tapped. For the ride, Disney writers were asked to pen a story explaining why so many ghosts had been trapped in this house for so long. The novellas written ranged from the ultra gruesome to the just plain silly. In the end, bits an pieces from several stories were used to culminate into the ride. For the movie, one basic story was pulled, the cursed bride, broadened and changed to fit a more romantic plot. Racial discrimination themes are very lightly touched upon, but are all but buried by lackluster special effects and (gulp) chase scenes (ugh).
Humor is off and on. Brief moments of quips from Madame Leota (Jennifer Tilly) and 4 computer generated singing gravestone busts give laughs to a film where Murphy should be the comedian. Still, I can’t blame the actors entirely because the writing was just plain weak. In a contrast to Pirates, the references to the theme park ride were obvious and forced and except for Rick Baker’s undead creatures, who received entirely too little screen time, there was no originality.
This is clearly a family oriented movie, more for children and die hard Disney fans then your average moviegoer. Although mildly entertaining, The Haunted Mansion likely won’t be able to scare up enough business to justify a sequel…thankfully. The only draw this could have in a future DVD purchase is if they offer the kind of historical and behind the scenes footage of the ride, not the movie, that Pirates does.
