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The Haunted Mansion
**
Cinema
Review - February 23, 2004
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. USA.
87 minutes. Directed by Rob Minkoff. Produced by Andrew Gunn, Don Hahn. Written
by David Berenbaum. Starring Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Nathaniel Parker,
Marsha Thomason, Jennifer Tilly, Wallace Shawn, Dina Spybey, Marc John Jefferies,
Aree Davis, Jim Doughan, Rachael Harris, Steve Hytner, Heather
Juergensen.
The vain part of me wishes I was more mean-spirited,
and could write something biting and funny about "The Haunted
Mansion". One-liners would flow, about the cheesiness of it all,
and the lack of conviction in its purpose or tone. About the career of Eddie
Murphy, the dull supernatural gags, and about how the story revolves around
a lookalike to a legendary figure whose painting hangs on the wall, as every
second ghost movie seems to do.
But I just can't do it. I can't think up the
one-liners, and I can't see the movie as being as bad as it probably is.
It's my childhood, you see; my love for Eddie Murphy, my memories of "Trading
Places" and "48 Hrs." and all the rest of those wonderful comedy flicks.
Murphy has made some stinkers, but every picture he's in, I go to with a
certain blind optimism. I would even have liked to see "Pluto Nash", except
I was away when it came out at the cinema, and was gone from every screen
by the time I came back.
"The Haunted Mansion" is not an awful movie, and
thus I almost feel like I haven't even seen it. There are Murphy's great
films, there are his bombs, and then there are films like this one -- I go
in all happy, it doesn't make me happier, but it doesn't make me sad and
so it ends up washing over me.
Murphy plays a real estate agent who works too
hard and tends to miss out on family quality time. This weekend he's promised
to take the wife and kids on a break -- but first, there'll be a quick detour,
to a creaky old stately home where the grass overgrows and a cemetery lurks
out back. Shiznit happens, and the family cannot leave: Marsha Thomason plays
Murphy's wife, who bears a strong resemblance to the lost love of the owner,
the charmingly broody Master Gracey (Nathaniel Thompson). The butler and
the master arrange some sort of conspiracy where she will be tricked into
marrying him, in order to remove their earthbound curse. (They're actually
ghosts, you see.) Murphy has to scurry all over the house finding keys and
doing little tasks in order to find the wife, rescue her from the captors
and appreciate what he's got in the happy ending.
Everything is here that should be. There are comic
support characters, with the servants played by Wallace Shawn and Dina Spybey,
and a greenish globe that seems to know a lot of secrets played by a sarcastic
Jennifer Tilly. There are scenes where bits of the house show hidden traps
or come alive; there are skeletons that jump out of the closet and chase
after Murphy and the kids. The movie has a full, colourful, golden look about
it -- standardised and unexciting, but pretty.
And… so what? Murphy doesn't do anything
funny. He banters somewhat, and his timing is that of a comedian, and he
has opportunities to look flustered. But the movie seems to want to tell
its story, and not much else. It's all functional. Nothing is awful, but
it's bland. There are no scares, because the soundtrack never cranks up enough
fearsome noises and the goblins do not move with enough speed or fill the
frame with menace. We cannot appreciate the feel of the house, because despite
the colour scheme, it looks like a set -- we're not surprised to learn that
"The Haunted Mansion" was originally a theme park ride at
Disney.
This is a movie for kids. They'll like the colours
more than I did. They might get involved in the plot. They will probably
not have too much baggage with Murphy, although many of them might have seen
"Daddy Day Care", where again he played a nice guy whose presence was reassuring
but was never given too much to say that was actually comic. Aside from the
"Doctor Dolittle" films, which have enough silly moments with the animals
to be sort of entertaining, I don't like Ed's reinvention as a cuddly, benign
guy who now and again gets in a jam and tries to make it seem humorous by
opening his eyes real wide. He's better at being rebellious, or offensive,
or at mimicking other personas, as in "Bowfinger" or "Raw". When you see
him in a project like this, you hope it did something for his bank balance,
because it's not going to boost his ego and probably won't even stay in his
memory.
COPYRIGHT©
2004 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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