Since the first time I visited Walt Disney World when I was 12 years old, the first thing I always head for is my favorite attraction, The Haunted Mansion. I’ve been to the Haunted Mansion in Florida, California, and even the Phantom Manor in France and I absolutely love ever incarnation. I can’t wait to see the version in Tokyo this Summer.
So, what is it that attracts me to this rather feeble attempt at theme park horror? You’ve got me… I just love it. I will always love it, and God-willing when I’m a feeble old man of 90, I will still be boarding a doombuggy to explore the haunted halls of the mansion.
So, I was actually sort of looking foreword to The Haunted Mansion movie. Granted, I had plenty of reservations about the film, but I had to take into account that Pirates of the Caribbean was an excellent film when it had no right to be. Maybe The Haunted Mansion would be different?
The Evers family consisting of a real estate agent mom and dad and two kids come to the Gracie Mansion thinking that they are there to arrange to sell the joint. What they don’t realize is that the mansion is haunted and that the ghosts are after more than just a lucrative sell.
Eddie Murphy plays the father of the family and let me just say, out of all of Eddie Murphy’s roles over the years… this had got to be the most grating… the most irritating… and the most phoned in performance of them all. You can tell that this wasn’t a project that Eddie cared a whole hell of a lot about.
But, then again, neither did the writers. I mean, what else can you say about a movie that goes from juvenile puns and cutesy ghosts one minute, then barrels into pure attempted terror the next. Watching this movie is like taking a doom buggy through The Haunted Mansion having it jerk and sputter the entire way, running over kittens and puppies as it does so.
This movie is weak, ill thought out, and just plain stupid. There was a great opportunity to make a good movie and everyone involved blew it big time. This movie could have been great… it could have been scary… it could have been anything other than what it was.
Let’s face it… this was a cash grab that no one at Disney cared about. I can only hope that, in the next few years, someone will come along and reboot the Haunted Mansion movie the right way.
Jason Gaston 