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The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Someone deliver me Michael Eisner's head on a plate pronto. Poor Walt must be spinning in his grave watching this guy plunder all of his hard work for cheap bucks over and over again. As if the the crappy direct to video sequels of all the Disney animated classics weren't sufficient whoring of Walt's legacy, now we have the putrid new trend of basing movies on theme park rides. The Country Bears and Pirates of the Caribbean have already been run through the Disney marketing machine on their way to theaters and now we get Haunted Mansion, which manages the astounding double offense of being a pathetic excuse to make a movie and feature the long since creatively bereft Eddie Murphy. If Pluto Nash was a reason to hate Murphy, Haunted Mansion is a reason to start getting quotes from local mob kneecappers.
Okay, that was a bit over the top but damn it, this movie is so bad it makes me want to get violent. When people talk about movies inspiring violence, this is the kind of movie they should be targeting. It's so bad you walk out of the theater wanting to hit someone. Anyone.
The movie features Murphy as real estate agent Jim Evers, a guy who cares more about selling than he does about his family. He's supposed to be taking his family on a vacation but jumps at the chance to sell a mansion in a high dollar district. A big rainstorm washes out the bridges and forces them to stay in what is obviously a haunted house. That's the story. The outcome is that with the help of ghosts, Murphy learns to love his family. I had to keep punching myself in the nuts to keep from vomiting on the kid next to me. That's how horrible this is.
Murphy is doing the same shtick he's been forcing on us in all his recent "family" movies. Not an ounce of anything new to be found here. The girl playing his daughter is the epitome of the obnoxious child to be found in many a sitcom. Her dialogue is completely wrong for a child of that age, sounding far older and yet having less maturity at the same time. One scene has her fighting off skeletons with her father's help that is sure to go down in history as one of the worst ideas ever put to film. Other bad acting comes from Jennifer Tilly in a role that manages to disrupt what little flow the movie has with an ill conceived performance. She doesn't deserve all the blame though, someone had to write this drivel first. On the bright side, Terrence Stamp and Wallace Shawn turn in nice performances that manage to keep this from being the worst thing I've ever seen.
The whole thing is a giant mess. It isn't even vaguely scary and will surely have people who have taken the actual ride scratching their heads. To take something with as thin a story as a theme park ride and make it into a movie with an even thinner story is mind numbing. I admit that the movie I saw was not finished and that surely helped my low opinion of the visuals but you'll notice that I had little to say about that in this review. This movie gets a bad review on the strength of a crappy story, shaky directing and bad acting. That you don't need a slick finish to appreciate.
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