Haunted Mansion

I like a good haunted house movie. I also like a bad haunted house movie. Frankly, as long as a movie's got a big, spooky house in it, I'm probably going to enjoy it. And when I can entertain myself by watching stuff in the background (like in-jokes or character actors), I count that as good-time movie fun.

So I enjoyed Disney's Haunted Mansion a lot. It's no Pirates of the Caribbean, but that just means I won't be rushing out to buy the DVD on the very first day it's available (which, for Pirates, is this Tuesday). I wasn't expecting Great Cinema, but there were things I wanted to see. I have my favorite parts of the ride, and I wanted them in the movie, and I didn't care how obviously they were shoehorned in. You can't call a movie "Haunted Mansion" and not have the Hitchhiking Ghosts, you know? And the makers of this movie apparently agree with me: it's got the raven, and the song Grim Grinning Ghosts, and it even starts with "Greetings, Foolish Mortals." If you sit through all the credits, you even get Jennifer Tilly doing the "Hurry baaa-aaack" bit. And that's perfect, because that's exactly what needed to be after the credits. Some might think it was going a bit overboard to put in so many of the paintings and busts and pulsing doors and whatnot. Not me; I loved sitting there thinking "Oh, look! They kept the same faces on the busts! Thurl Ravenscroft gets to be in the movie! Yay!"

And the backup actors were good, too. Terence Stamp and Wallace Shawn are always fun. And Dina Waters, who I remember from "Greg the Bunny," also seems funny. And Bania's in it, too! You know, from Seinfeld. Really, it hardly matters that the main characters are so dull.

Yeah, I guess I have some complaints about the movie. I thought I was going to dislike Eddie Murphy because I anticipated lots of mugging and general Eddie Murphy-ing around. Instead, I found him pretty boring. Likewise for his wife and the owner of the house. I kind of liked the kids, I guess.

The plot was, well, it was nothing new. To be fair, there's only so much you can do with a haunted house movie. You have to get an innocent person or family into the house, and that means you have to spend a bunch of time at the beginning of the movie with no cool spooky effects going on. Then you have to spend some time in the house pretending it's normal. That's my least favorite section, because it's pretty much a waste of time. The title pretty much gives away the plot, so let's get the ghosts going already.

Oh! they kept in the line "Of course, there's always . . . my way," but they gave it to Wallace Shawn. Now I want to see what he'd do with other classic lines. I bet he'd be hysterical saying "As God is my witness, I shall never be hungry again."