FILM LANGUAGE - A FILM I HATE
For my film I hate, I've chosen The Haunted Mansion, released in 2003 and directed by Rob Minkoff.
The Haunted Mansion movie SUCKS. The source material, on the other hand, doesn't suck. This movie is in fact based on a classic Disneyland ride, opening in 1969 as part of the Magic Kingdom's New Orleans Square expansion. Before his death, Walt Disney had planned a haunted house for Disneyland, working with his Imagineer team on the attraction. The ride was finished 3 years after Walt Disney's death, with plenty of internal struggles on the ride's tone.
Finally, the attraction opened to unanimous praise, and is still considered one of, if not THE best Disney Parks attractions of all time. It's home to iconic Disney Parks characters, including the Hitchhiking Ghosts, Madame Leota, Constance the Bride and, my personal favourite, the Hatbox Ghost.
The ride has been the inspiration for other versions in almost every other Disney Park; Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland have Haunted Mansions with slight variations inside and outside, Hong Kong Disneyland has Mystic Manor (a more comedic version of the ride) and Disneyland Paris has Phantom Manor (which leans more into the horror elements).
After Disney received critical claim for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (also based on one of Disneyland's rides), they released a film based on The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy. They took the same approach they did with PotC, where the ride would simply serve as a basis, and an original story would be constructed around it. The big problem using the same approach for both was that Pirates of the Caribbean had no pre-established characters or stories, whereas The Haunted Mansion did. Creating a whole new story for the Haunted Mansion, which already had one, was a bigger risk than using the pre-existing ones; unfortunately, a risk that didn't pay off.
The story revolves around the Evers family, specifically Jim Evers, a real estate agent who takes his family to scout the mansion he's been tapped to sell. Evers is played by Eddie Murphy, who gives a decent enough performance with the script he's got. Unfortunately, a lot of what he has to do can be described as "stock Eddie Murphy slapstick", which was too silly for a movie based on a subject matter with darker humour.
The movie takes some classic elements from the ride, including Madame Leota, the Hitchhiking Ghosts, the singing busts and their signature song, Grim Grinning Ghosts. However, it only took them in on the surface level, completely ignoring everything that makes them great in the ride. Leota is probably the closest to her ride counterpart, still acting as a mystic seance. The Hitchhiking Ghosts are a simple cameo appearance, which is essentially what they are in the original. However, the way they're written into the ride makes their story open ended and mysterious; the movie treats them as a joke. Even the song, a theme for the 999 ghosts of the mansion, is the setup for a joke.
(The trailer for The Haunted Mansion)
Finally, the attraction opened to unanimous praise, and is still considered one of, if not THE best Disney Parks attractions of all time. It's home to iconic Disney Parks characters, including the Hitchhiking Ghosts, Madame Leota, Constance the Bride and, my personal favourite, the Hatbox Ghost.
(The original Hatbox Ghost disappeared 3 weeks after the ride's opening in 1969, but was reinstalled in 2015 for Disneyland's diamond anniversary)
The ride has been the inspiration for other versions in almost every other Disney Park; Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland have Haunted Mansions with slight variations inside and outside, Hong Kong Disneyland has Mystic Manor (a more comedic version of the ride) and Disneyland Paris has Phantom Manor (which leans more into the horror elements).
After Disney received critical claim for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (also based on one of Disneyland's rides), they released a film based on The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy. They took the same approach they did with PotC, where the ride would simply serve as a basis, and an original story would be constructed around it. The big problem using the same approach for both was that Pirates of the Caribbean had no pre-established characters or stories, whereas The Haunted Mansion did. Creating a whole new story for the Haunted Mansion, which already had one, was a bigger risk than using the pre-existing ones; unfortunately, a risk that didn't pay off.
The story revolves around the Evers family, specifically Jim Evers, a real estate agent who takes his family to scout the mansion he's been tapped to sell. Evers is played by Eddie Murphy, who gives a decent enough performance with the script he's got. Unfortunately, a lot of what he has to do can be described as "stock Eddie Murphy slapstick", which was too silly for a movie based on a subject matter with darker humour.
The movie takes some classic elements from the ride, including Madame Leota, the Hitchhiking Ghosts, the singing busts and their signature song, Grim Grinning Ghosts. However, it only took them in on the surface level, completely ignoring everything that makes them great in the ride. Leota is probably the closest to her ride counterpart, still acting as a mystic seance. The Hitchhiking Ghosts are a simple cameo appearance, which is essentially what they are in the original. However, the way they're written into the ride makes their story open ended and mysterious; the movie treats them as a joke. Even the song, a theme for the 999 ghosts of the mansion, is the setup for a joke.
(Grim Grinning Ghosts as it appears in the movie)
Overall, The Haunted Mansion movie is a bad movie. Is it completely unsalvageable? Not necessarily. But
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