Delayed Reaction: The Haunted Mansion

Premise: Married realtors bring their family to a mysterious mansion in hopes of landing the listing only to realize that it's haunted.

 

Do you want to know the worst thing about The Haunted Mansion? I'm going to trick myself into watching this again in another 5 or 10 years. I know it's going to happen and I'm already angry at myself about it. You see, I'm a Disney Park fanatic. The Haunted Mansion attraction is one of my two or three favorites in all the parks. I've been on it countless times and love finding out more about it. I'm the same way about Pirates of the Caribbean. For that attraction, there's a lovely symbiotic relationship between it and first movie. I enjoy both independently. My Disney Park fandom hadn't really solidified until long after The Curse of the Black Pearl (and none of the sequels) became one of my favorite movies. The movie stands on its own, but I love the assorted nods to the attraction and seeing how one informs the other. So, I end up liking both the attraction and the movie even more because of the relationship.

 

The Haunted Mansion attraction has far more lore attached to it, so it seems like I should be able to watch the movie and at least appreciate the way that it plays off the ride. I'm annoyingly determined to realize that The Haunted Mansion movie is actually a masterpiece. I mean, I love Tomorrowland more than the consensus. Why not this?

 

The thing is, The Haunted Mansion is a bad movie. It's not bad because it isn't faithful to the attraction. It's a bad movie and it isn't faithful to the attraction. To be honest, if it stayed truer to the attraction but was a bad movie, I'd probably find an excuse to defend it. I think there's a great movie that could be made off The Haunted Mansion. It has a playful but dark tone. It's full of striking and memorable images. The story of the ride isn't actually very clear but hints at a number of things. Much like Pirates, it's really just a setting. You can place any story into it.

 

Sadly, in 2003, Disney decided that an Eddie Murphy family comedy was the way to go. In hindsight, it's obvious why that was mistake. He was a year removed from the legendary box office disaster The Adventures of Pluto Nash and other than a pair of Oscar hopefuls (Dreamgirls, Dolemite is My Name) and some Shrek sequels, his movie choices since this movie have been a dumpster fire. At the time though, Daddy Day Care was a hit that same summer. He wasn't that far removed from Dr. Dolittle and The Nutty Professor. It was probably fair to think he could carry this movie like Johnny Depp did earlier that summer with Pirates. So, I get the reason for mistake, but this is very much a disengaged Eddie Murphy. That's why so much of his post-2000 career has been awful. Murphy was huge in the 80s and 90s because Eddie Murphy was this comedic force with swagger and charisma who could make just about anything funny. Then, he started thinking he was Eddie Murphy. It's a mistake a lot of movie stars make. People don't like Eddie Murphy. They liked what Eddie Murphy brought to a movie. That's a key distinction. When he starts only bringing Eddie Murphy and nothing else, that's a problem.

 

For all my rambling, I really think the problem with this movie is pretty simple. It should've been PG-13 and it didn't need little kids in it. That's the secret sauce to The Curse of the Black Pearl. Plenty of kids still saw that even despite the rating and lack of children. Frankly, I don't think it's a coincidence that Disney's rise to box office dominance has lined up with their decision to be looser with PG-13 ratings for their movies. This version of The Haunted Mansion was so worried about scaring away young kids that it stripped away the spookiest and most memorable elements of the popular all-ages attraction. So, this movie isn't even as scary as Casper. I suppose there is a way they could've made the movie good while still keeping the young kids around, but having them makes it far too easy to talk down to the audience with the humor.

 

That means the movie wasn't spooky or even that macabre. It wasn't funny. The star wasn't doing anything to make the material work. This was just a bad movie and a complete mistake. I'm hoping they learned their lesson with The Jungle Cruise, coming in 2021.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend