The Haunted Mansion

<font="+1">Haunted by Eddie

Sometimes a movie can be reviewed with just the two words, “Don’t bother.” This is one of those movies. Unfortunately, two words doesn’t fill this space, so here goes:

Speaking of filling space, The Haunted Mansion does just that, filling a screen at the multiplex until something interesting comes along. There is absolutely nothing of note here. Whereas the theme park-themed Pirates of the Caribbean proved to be an unexpected E-ticket for the Mouse Factory, the most this thing can expect is a parking ticket.

A not-even-bothering Eddie Murphy and non-actor Marsha Thomason manage to remember their lines as husband-and-wife real estate agents who take their kids along while they visit the titular mansion to broker a deal. The problem is that the joint’s only occupants happen to be long dead. Marsha just happens to be the spitting image of the main ghost’s old flame, so they want her dead, too (just go with it). At one point, their little boy intones, “I see dead people.”

That’s about as ambitious as the humor gets here. About the raunchiest the movie gets is when Murphy cribs from Young Frankenstein to comment about the size of "knockers" on a door, so I suppose this is inoffensive fare to drop the kids off to while you do your shopping. There are a couple of scenes that might be scary for a toddler (Disney indulging in its mother-in-peril fetish, a zombie attack and a flame demon rising from Hell), but that’s about it.