'Haunted House' creaks with hollow horror

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Disney's latest cinematic cross promotion attempts to find a family comedy with a spooky flourish hidden in the old dark house of the funhouse theme park attraction, but laughs and scares are both scarce in the flavorless ghost story they unearthed.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE HAUNTED MANSION

DIRECTOR: Rob Minkoff

CAST: Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Nathaniel Parker, Marsha Thomason

RUNNING TIME: 88 minutes

RATING: PG for frightening images, thematic elements and language

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Galleria 11, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Mountlake 9, Pacific Place, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C-

Eddie Murphy, completing his transformation from fearless comedian to neutered, inoffensive movie star, headlines as workaholic real estate agent Jim Evers. His drive to sell, sell, sell makes him a stranger to his family, or so the script insists, and he sidetracks the family vacation for business when his wife and partner, Sara (Marsha Thomason), is personally requested to call on a client.

Jim insists they detour to check out the client's ancient family manor, which has all the creaky presence of a leftover set from the 1950s studio backlot. There's a curse behind those groaning doors and it has locked servants and master (Nathaniel Parker) alike in this limbo.

Sara is the key to their freedom. Or so insists the manor's antique of a butler Ramsley (Terence Stamp), who rolls his eyes and wheezes veddy proper niceties around the modern, middle-class Evers, like a gentleman's gentleman enduring a visit from the master's poor relations.

While Dad and the kids embark on a veritable scavenger hunt to save Mom from the spectral conspiracy, the house unleashes its battery of secret passages, moving sculptures, phosphorescent phantoms, magic mirrors and floating furniture. In other words, all the familiar imagery of the original ride, minus the charm, the tongue-in-cheek cleverness and the how-did-they-do-that? sense of wonder.

The special effects display is so lacking in imagination it turns into so much noise, just a flashy distraction from the stiff, stock cliches of the by-the-numbers script.

Animator turned director Rob Minkoff, who found magnificence in Disney's animated "The Lion King" and sweetness and wonder in the "Stuart Little" films, finds nothing close to either in this utterly undistinguished material. At least the ride took you somewhere.