Too scary for young children and lacking in many fun moments that tie in with the legendary park attraction, Disney's HAUNTED MANSION is an admirable but ultimately failed attempt to create something special.
The tone of the movie is all over the place. Is it a comedy with slapstick moments that allude to the famous ride? Yes.
Is it a dramatic movie that deals with death, loss of loved ones and even suicide? Yes.
My head was spinning faster than Madam Leota's as it pin-balled back and forth between plot points.
Let's get one thing clear. LaKeith Stanfield (Knives Out, Sorry To Bother You) rises above the film with a great performance as Ben Matthias. He was an astrophysicist and scientist in his twenties, but now he's angry at the world and giving walking tours of New Orleans, verbally abusing anyone with any belief in ghosts or the afterlife. His world view is VERY dark for a Disney family movie and that's before the main titles!
He's approached by Father Kent (a very winning Owen Wilson in full Owen mode) to help a woman relocating to start over, in a big house that was mighty cheap on Zillow.
Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her 9 year old son Travis (Chase Dillon) have moved into THE haunted mansion. Like a paranormal roach motel, once you get in, they wont ever leave you alone. What do they want?
Any Disney park fan knows they want one more willing soul to join the 999 happy haunts already in play. The magic 1000 will give the leader, The Hatbox Ghost, a whole lot of power. Honestly, it was all a little silly and murky, just a skeleton of a story built to hang a few more members of the team on and stick them all into danger.
Tiffany Hadish (The Card Counter) is Harriet, a palm reader/psychic who's dialed into the Mansion. Danny DeVito plays it very broad (think Peter Ustinov in "Blackbeard's Ghost" broad) as Professor Davis, an expert on the owner's history.
Jared Leto is the best thing in the movie as the Hatbox Ghost, but he's not around nearly enough.
I kept waiting for something fun to happen, and once in awhile it would, but this is a pretty heavy, laborious movie for the kids in the audience. I guess even kids movies need to be loaded with lots of existential angst to check all the boxes these days. Suicide and an Axe-murdering ghost in a kids movie? Umm.......yeah, let's pass.
The sad thing is that Director Justin Simien knows what he's doing. He's clearly talented and takes great advantage of the $150 million budget, some imaginative production design and New Orleans itself. He's sabotaged by a screenplay trying be too many things to too many people.
Dawson's role is underwritten, but Stanfield's performance lifts everything around him. Jamie Curtis adds some much needed fun as Madam Leota's head in that crystal ball that we all love at the park.
There's an enjoyable scene with chairs becoming Doom Buggies and that stretching room with the portraits on the wall, along with those hitchhiking graveyard ghosts, but all those scenes leave you hungry for more FUN!
HAUNTED MANSION would have been a much better movie if it would have not taken the GRIM in Grim Grinning Ghosts quite so to heart. It sadly limps along to a disappointing C.
When hinges creak in doorless chambers.......
Meh. Too bad.
Let's hope an "It's a Small World" movie isn't next. Woof.
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