Haunted Mansion

Grade: C

Bruce Springsteen has a song called “Highway Patrolman,” which is one of my favorite “story” songs ever. It’s so narratively rich that Sean Penn made it into a movie in the early 1990s, called The Indian Runner. I’ve still never seen it, but it’s the only example I’m aware of where a 4 to 5 minute song inspired a whole entire movie. Haunted Mansion is a feature film based, of course, on the ride at Disney. I doubt it’s as successful a transition as what Penn did from the Springsteen song.

Rosario Dawson plays a widowed mother who moves into the mansion (the home of her dreams) with her 9-year-old son. I wonder what kind of realtor she was working with here, if they didn’t bother to spruce it up a little, or even take care of the cobwebs. I hope she got a good deal. After not even one night in the new place, they decide nope, they’re outta there. Of course they go back, and I give the movie credit for answering the question of why. They were being followed and haunted by these spirits at every hotel and Airbnb they bounced around to, so they figured they might as well go back to the mansion if they weren’t going to be left alone anyway. With the ghosts localized in that one place, at least they wouldn’t be bothering anything or anybody else.

An impressive assembly of character actors arrive on the scene to help them through this. I like Owen Wilson and Danny DeVito, but they are types at this point. Here, they come on and predictably play Wilson and DeVito. Wilson whispers most of his role, like he hasn’t moved past his recent Bob Ross-like painter from Paint. LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marilu Henner, Dan Levy, and Jared Leto fare a little better.

The movie systematically goes through the checklist of legendary images and sounds from the ride, to appease fans. There’s the round, claustrophobic room that stretches. The dancing ghosts. The one that is sitting in the car with you that you can only see in a reflection. The “999 happy haunts, but there’s room for 1000” line. The rest is just riffing and killing time to stretch it out to two hours, with insincere mugging, comedy that often doesn’t land, and dramatic moments that would look forced in a soap opera. Stick with the ride.

Grade: C