I’d really like to tell you that this year’s Haunted Mansion film is much better than the one starring Eddie Murphy that came out twenty years ago, but, alas, I cannot. It seems that the folks at Disney haven’t learned a single thing in the twenty years that passed between the two productions. They’ve delivered yet another vapid and poorly crafted take on the greatest dark ride of all time, and as an avid fan of the ride, I’m disappointed once again.
I don’t know why I even entertained the idea that they might have actually mad a decent movie this time around. They’ve only had 54 years to think about it. While I’m no fan of the Pirates films, at least the first one (Curse of the Black Pearl) used the ride as a jumping off point and not a destination. That’s alluded to in the presence of a subtitle despite the fact that it was the first film in the series. You could chop the “Pirates of the Caribbean” IP out of the film completely and still have pretty much the same movie.
The Haunted Mansion should be so lucky. The ride really has no story at all. It’s a series of vignettes that’s strung together almost entirely by the Ghost Host narrator who follows you through the ride. Like the Pirates ride before it, it’s the ride’s audio track - more specifically it’s music - that’s the through line for the attraction. Sadly, this music is almost entirely absent in the new film.
Screenwriter Katie Dippold fails to follow even the most basic tenets of storytelling. This refugee from bad TV writing on Parks and Recreation (sorry, not a fan) has driven one bus load of characters into another busload of vague stories but they don’t collide in any meaningful or entertaining way. It’s like she was writing five or six individual episodes of a Haunted Mansion anthology series instead of a feature. I defy you to figure out who the protagonist of this mess is. I genuinely disliked the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion movie, but even I’ll admit that I knew who the protagonist was from frame one.
When the foundation is weak, the mansion is likely to fall and oh boy this one falls like the house of Usher. Its junky mess of stories and characters are further thwarted by what feels like a very rushed production. Tone varies wildly, not only from scene to scene, but from shot to shot. A character who’s real-world morose one minute, is running around like Wile E. Coyote the next. It’s frankly stupifying that this edit made it out the door.
I liked some of the production design choices, but even they pale in comparison to that of the Eddie Murphy movie. The sets are okay-ish in that they reference the ride but they never take that next step into reality.
I couldn’t quite figure out why there were so many bad wigs on display. Couldn’t the producers of the film see that they never look real on camera? It’s distracting, especially on Rosario Dawson. Her wig should get screen credit as her sidekick.
Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota seems like an interesting bit of stunt casting until you realize that Curtis isn’t exactly great at broad comedy. Her accent comes and goes at random despite the fact that she’s a head in a ball and all of her work had to have been done in post anyway. Besides, since when does Leota have a vaguely eastern European accent?
I kept asking myself why Danny Devito and Owen Wilson were even in this. I suppose it must have been a pretty decent payday for them both. They’re not utilized onscreen except as plot points. The casting of the whole film is a scattershot attempt at getting all ages and ethnicities interested in attending. The film appears to have been cast by the Disney marketing department.
I could go on, but I think you get my drift. This movie is one “zoinks” shy of being a Scooby Doo episode, and not a particularly good one. NOT recommended.
