Haunted Mansion review: Another frightfully unfunny Disney ride
LaKeith Stanfield shines, but Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, and Tiffany Haddish are just foolish mortals in the latest attempt to adapt this Disney attraction
Film Reviews Haunted Mansion
It would be interesting to see the version of Haunted Mansion that star LaKeith Stanfield seems to think he’s in—one where his jaded, grieving, scientist-turned-wannabe believer in ghosts could see his grounded performance matched by an equally compelling setting, story, and fellow cast members. This, unfortunately, is not that movie. Only Jared Leto, who presumably did most of his work on a motion-capture stage as the unabashedly evil Hatbox Ghost, offers an equivalent level of commitment, imbuing his decapitated avatar with the sort of theatrical flourishes fans wished he had as Morbius. Director Guillermo del Toro would have made that character the protagonist; Justin Simien effectively makes him the ride’s Ghost Host, which may play as blasphemy to die-hard theme park geeks.
Director Rob Minkoff’s 2003 film version of the Disney ride gets unfair amounts of hate, much of it due to poorly edited trailers that made Eddie Murphy’s lead performance look more Jar Jar-level than it actually was. But like Hocus Pocus, it seems to have aged well by keeping things simple—the goal of the Haunted Mansion should be to find a way out. Even the 2021 Muppet version for Disney+ understood this. In Simien’s new film, characters can come and go as they please—they’ll just be followed home by ghosts who will harass them into returning, like a sort of PG take on Ju-on: The Grudge.
For a ride set around New Orleans, the Haunted Mansion has always seemed extremely white, so the introductory scenes of the new movie showing New Orleans as the diverse city that it is feel like a much-needed counter-narrative strike. Unfortunately, they don’t last—after scientist Ben (Stanfield) meets ghost tour host Alyssa (Charity Jordan), the movie skips ahead; she’s been fridged, and Ben has buried his grief in booze and B.S. Accepting an offer from alleged priest Kent (Owen Wilson), he takes a $2,000 fee to investigate the spooky residence in question, only to find his skepticism quickly dissipate in the face of grim, grinning ghosts who seem more interested in hostility than socialization.
The original Disneyland ride manages an expert tonal balance, spooky but seldom outright scary. That’s tougher to pull off in a movie, which requires more jeopardy. Riders know they’ll leave the mansion at the end, but they have to believe the onscreen characters might be doomed. Will you care? With this bunch, not really. Wilson, Danny DeVito, and Tiffany Haddish barely commit to their shtick, while Jamie Lee Curtis half-asses a vague “gypsy” accent as crystal ball-encased psychic Madame Leota. We cinephiles love Curtis, but Jennifer Tilly took the same floaty-headed character more seriously in the 2003 version.
Disney adults will see plenty of Easter eggs to point at—the floating candelabra! The bride’s lair in the attic! A character named after Imagineer Rolly Crump! The same five minutes of music from the ride basically played in a loop for two hours! If a reference-fest is what you want, Muppets Haunted Mansion did it better. If it’s a story with actual escalating tension you seek, the 2003 film has superior pacing. Haunted Mansion (2023) looks real pretty, with the best CG money can buy, but primarily feels like the most calculated of corporate products. Frequent Paul Feig collaborator Katie Dippold seems to have been ordered to shoehorn as many references as possible into the script—including weird plugs for the likes of CVS and Burger King—rather than telling a coherent tale.
As a result, the movie at times feels like an eternal cycle of the nine-minute ride, which loses its luster after 123 of those minutes. It offers you this chilling challenge—find a way out! Better yet, refrain from being the mortal foolish enough to enter in the first place. Incidentally, that brings up a weird issue with the movie overall; characters have to trick others into entering the house and becoming cursed, and they later assist at least one ghost in grand theft. The concept of informed consent is treated as a disposable, ends-justify-the-means formality. At first, this is actually commented on, but later it becomes an uncomfortable pattern played for laughs.
Kudos to Stanfield for not behaving like a dead man walking, and giving it his all opposite things he couldn’t possibly have seen on set. If the ghosts follow him home, it’s only because he’s more interesting than anything in their house.
The Haunted Mansion opens in theaters Friday, July 28
105 Comments
Disney lost an estimated $900 million on their last 8 movies, and this should keep that trend going. Wonder if they regret not releasing Sound of Freedom while they had the rights to it. They could definitely use a box office winner right now.
No, because nobody wants a “hit” that plays to empty theaters just because some Trump Nazi moron (sorry—”moran”) like you desires it….
Despite their losses, Disney and it’s subsidiaries are still the highest grossing studio for 2023 YTD according to Box Office Pro (and their numbers seem to line up with other sources): Disney + 20th Century + Searchlight + Star: $1.52B
Universal + Focus Features: $1.23B
Sony Pictures + Sony Classics + Crunchyroll: $697.5M
Paramount: $534.8M
Warner Bros.: $426.4M
Lionsgate: $347.7MThey earned that money with 5 fewer releases than Universal. They don’t really need a box office win so much as they need movies that don’t have insane budgets. Indiana Jones was a box office winner by a substantial margin, but it ain’t going to make back $300 million.
Where’d you get the $900M number? I don’t think Disney has had a great year by any means, but I’d be surprised to see them take that much of a hit. Indy 5 is the only big loser so far.
They released the highest-grossing film of the summer, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which has made eight times more than Sound of Freedom. Their only real flop this year was Indiana Jones, and even that mess is on track to end up with around $400 million.
I doubt Disney execs have given more than a cursory thought to Sound of Freedom. $127 million is not worth the damage it would do to the company’s overall brand.
You have zero insight into anything.
Lol nah, your shit right-wing grift is unnecessary for normal people.
If you have to go to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, just remember, you can always take the easy way out.
Okay let’s not act like the Eddie Murphy film is good. Its pretty lame, there’s a reason Pirates of the Caribbean is the only successful Disney Ride film. Pity, I think Haunted Mansion is the best Disney Ride regardless of park, I wish it would get a good film. Well I’m young enough to probably last another 20 to see attempt number 3.
The ride is great just because there is so much to look at you couldn’t catch it all in 10 trips. The effects are cool and sometimes a bit startling. Just moving through the queue is fun. I have zero interest in a movie based upon it and yeah, by breaking from the ride entirely the Pirates movies managed to avoid this trap. Really all they share with the ride is the name.
Yeah pirates managed to include a lot of “scenes” but it operates without any prior knowledge and features much original content which was the correct way to go.
Well, there were definitely pirates, and they were in the Caribbean, so it was more than just the name. I’m more annoyed (although I imagine Tim Powers got some money, which was nice) that they bought the film rights to his novel On Stranger Tides (about ghost pirates) for one of the sequels and used nothing from it.
And of course they’ve put Sparrow and at least one other of the movie pirates in the rides now (which I kinda hate but I’m a grumpy purist who still wants the redhead.)
Yeah, people expect that character now, so I can forgive that.
I will never forgive them tearing out the penny arcade and the magic shop to put in a store selling more clothes with character faces on them. That was a bridge too far.
At least the Jack Sparrow animatronic is beautifully done (I’m frankly more annoyed with the changes over the years to the bride auction scene—hence my reference to We wants the redhead—even though of course I understand why Disney became, errr, uncomfortable with it. I guess you can always go to the version at Tokyo Disneyland which due to being Japan, and being owned by the Oriental Land Company who just license and pay for the Disney work, those types of changes rarely get implemented.)
And *totally* agreed about getting rid of the Penny Arcade and Magic Shop–I can’t believe any argument that they needed another merch store, and those touches were one thing that always made Disneyland a step above.
The made for TV Tower of Terror was a pretty good entry. I honestly think if this had a less big name cast, it could have been a fun Disney+ release.
Honestly, they should just cut their losses and start working on the hotly anticipated PeopleMover movie. We’ve finally got the technology to render people being moved at a reasonable pace while engaged in light conversation, and those stuffed suits at Disney must be smelling the money in the air by now.
Redo Country Bears or make the Star Wars Cruiser Gitmo movie.
And like the actual PeopleMover (which I guess still exists in Orlando if no longer in Anaheim), they could incorporate blurbs for other properties as the voice over in the ride points out rides and stores as it passes them.
Carousel of Progress would actually make a pretty interesting show… They could follow the family through the generations and make it a hopeful drama about society or whatever. It’s even got a built-in theme song.
I miss the PeopleMovers, it was a great way to catch your breath at the park (plus I loved the dumb Tron speed part).
‘”Well I’m young enough to probably last another 20 to see attempt number 3.”’Technically, THIS IS ATTEMPT NUMBER 3!You had the Eddie Murphy one, and you had the Muppets one.
This is true, although if we count Muppets, that’s by far the most successful attempt.
While a box office flop, Jungle Cruise is fucking fantastic!
I’m so confused about runtimes. Budgets and profitability are such a sticking point in the current strike — so why do studios turn out 2+ hour kids/family movies? A tight 90 min has got to be cheaper to produce (maybe not by 25% but certainly by 10-15%); plus, people want shorter films. Everyone complains about film length (Netflix literally has a category dedicated to this). Shorter runtimes allow for more showings which, weirdly, lead to more $. Add to all of this that the creatives behind this film aren’t auteurs pulling Cameron-esque stunts of film audience endurance. This is just a good old family film. So why on earth aren’t execs and their creative partners keeping an eye on running times? In most cases, it would lead to tighter films and better financial outcomes. And no one would complain about getting an extra 30 min of their life back. Am I crazy?
What’s wild is I’m old enough to remember when people complained they were getting ripped off by theaters with 80-90 minute run times because they could pack another showing into the day. That was probably a reasonable complaint but the idea that anything with substance has to be 2:15 or more is self-defeating (and yes, probably less profitable to theaters).
Back then, some movies did have an executive mandate to make it shorter. I remember a small nerd controversy over X-Men 3 being 30 minutes shorter than X-Men 2, despite it having to cover two big comic stories. Of course, a longer runtime wouldn’t have saved it, but it was one of the first indications the movie would suck.
Ha, that sounds more like the result of the editor getting into the booth and being “what the fuck do we have to work with here??”
Stand By Me ran 1:30, pretty in pink 1:36, sixteen candles 1:33, breakfast club 1:37, Nightmare on Elm Street 1:31, heathers 1:43, goonies 1:54…I just looked up one analysis, which found: “2021’s average runtime was 14 minutes longer than the average for 1991, and 21 minutes longer than the average runtime of the top-ten movies released in 1981.” https://www.whattowatch.com/features/are-movies-really-getting-longer#:~:text=1981%20%E2%80%94%20average%20110%20minutes&text=The%20longest%20film%2C%20Excalibur%2C%20clocks,over%20the%20120%2Dminute%20mark.
And I’d have a hard time saying any of those don’t have long enough to feel lived-in.
Did you live in India at some point, bfred?That sounds like a Bollywood movie complaint.
My suspicion is that filmmakers (or maybe just producers/studios) want their movies to feel more like big special events than mere films. Like, oh you can watch a shorter movie, but Oppenheimer (or insert your pick of way-too-long movie here) is something you’ve got to plan your day around which makes it feel like a much bigger deal.
Additionally, it could always be the cost of movies. If people are gonna actually spend the money on the pricey affair of going to the movies, they want to feel like they got bang for their buck. And so a mere 90 minute movie isn’t an option, they’ve got to at least be 2 hours to justify audiences’ investments. Mind you, this is dumb as hell, but I’m just trying to get into the mindset.
The scale of Oppenheimer can easily account for its running time but a Disney ride film is a whole different animal, including the audience mindset. I think Nolan’s film audience demands an epic, while the Haunted Mansion audience would be more than happy with a breezy run time.
I mean you’re not wrong, I totally agree about Oppenheimer, I’m saying that other movies want to be Oppenheimer (or Avatar, or whatever other epics are out there) so they stretch their runtimes to be closer to those “big deal” movies.
No argument here!
If you want to see the future of the media industry, video games are already their – there’s a reason why gaming’s the biggest, fattest, richest entertainment industry on the planet. They’ve mastered the art of the “event”. They cement ongoing revenue streams from single products (ie, milking the cow till its tits fall off) with DLC, Season Passes, and patches that change the base product. There’s endless swag, special editions, endless sequels – and, of course, selling the same tired game across myriad platforms over and over again over a series of years, if not decades.Shit: they’ve gotten it to the point where they’ve convinced their core demographic that the only way to get a game is to buy it months, if not years in advance, before there’s any indicator if the game’s even worth paying for.What gaming does these days isn’t sell a game that stands alone on its own as a worthy thing to spend your time on, but rather a ticket that grants you access to a socio-cultural space – a space that the company behind it pretty much controls. And gets to monopolise your time if you want to retain access to that space.The game, in and of itself, is almost irrelevant. Is it good? Is if fun and challenging and rewarding to play? Who cares? That’s the not the point. The point is you know own a cultural signifier that you may now hold up to others so that they may recognise it, and, in that, feel like you’re making friends – you sad, lonely, loser. You can post screenshots! You can crack the in-game memes with other gentlesirs! You can join the Discord! You have the 10″ doll made from plas- er, “limited edition resin figurine” that game with the cloth map and stickers and OST as part of the EB Games Special Edition Pre-Order Limited Edition Director’s Cut Delux Edition! You got Netflix to watch the tie-in anime! You bought the board game! You gain validity simply through your consumption of the product – and retain it via continued consumption.Do you have an actual opinion on the game? Fuck you. Other people like it, and you have no reason or evidence to assume that’s because of all the other bullshit I mentioned and not the fact that they actually like the game. (And here comes the bit where they start spouting sales and engagement metrics at you, as opposed to any sort of qualified critique or assessment.)Imagine a world where you could pre-sell movie tickets months in advance. Imagine a world where you’d release different cuts of the movie at different price points. Imagine a world where you could “update” the movie during its run and force viewers to go and see it again. Imagine a world where you movie is pretty much the only one playing on cinema screens. Imagine a world where any discourse around the movie is controlled by the production company threatening reviewers with terminated access. That’s pretty much what gaming has – and more! – and why it’s so lucrative.
Just out of curiosity are you also factoring in your shortened run-time the length of the credits? Cause some of that runtime has to factor in the credits. Also aren’t actors/actresses and the like paid based on how they are credited in the credits?
Runtimes account for credits. And it’s worth noting opening credits are a dying breed. Compare an 80s opening credit scene to anything made in the last 10, 15 years. So while closing credits and post credit scenes add to the run time (but only so much) today’s films have virtually no opening credits — they just leap right into the narrative. It evens out, at least. Or in some cases may even shave time off.
The Fire Starter reboot had opening credits but it also tried to share some history of the main characters at the same time.Deadpool on the other hand used the opening credits to tell another 4th wall breaking joke…
I feel like I read somewhere that the ballooning runtimes have something to do with getting people into the theaters. Like, the studios have some stats that say that, if a movie doesn’t seem “substantial” enough, then people won’t go see it in theaters.I might be wrong and, obviously, that logic is stupid as hell, but it’s 100% the way some fans value video games (“Don’t give me a tight, well-crafted 10 hour game. It’s gotta be 150 hours of boring grinding or I’m not getting my money’s worth!”) so I wouldn’t be surprised if enough idiots told the studios something similar about movies.
Yeah, opening credits are so much more creative these days. My favorite is the original Funny Games titles with the abrupt break in of Naked City’s Bonehead.
Right, but a lot of modern films literally have 10-15 minute long closing credits. Surely this wasn’t true in the 80s (and of course classic movies had 3-4 minute opening credits, but virtually no closing credits except maybe a cast list.)
You’re leading me down the rabbit hole. So, yes, closing credits are getting longer in part because of post-credit scenes, where applicable, but also because more people are required to make a film today. Films in the 80s and 90s had the same basic scrolling credits across the board and lasted at least 4-5 min. Can’t think of any that didn’t, so that convention hasn’t really evolved. It’s just that the scale of teams, particularly with CGI, has exploded. Combined, all these factors are making closing sequences longer. But that’s not the main culprit of bloated runtimes. The core films are just getting unnecessarily long. Again, some epics and tentpole type films are expected to be ridiculously long, but these smaller family films really have no call to be longer than 90 min. Neither the market nor studio economics demand it. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/12/09/when-did-movie-credits-get-so-long/
Thanks for that article. It explains a lot, actually.
I guess I was just thinking about how long end credits can be when I was watching Nimona on Netflix where they are 14 minutes long (and that doesn’t count the extra minutes for the Netflix translation teams at the end.) No post credit or mid credit sequence really though the first batch of end credits, as seems somewhat common now, have cute visuals to make people want to stay before the scrolling credits come in. So if you skip the credits, as a lot of families would do, that makes a movie sold as being 100 minutes, actually 85 minutes (which tracks for me—that’s like pretty standard for things like the classic Disney animated films.)
But you’re right—there are more people to credit now (I also think—and I don’t have this on any authority—that you didn’t use to get things like credits for caterers or for every member of the orchestra recording the score.) And there’s no excuse for a family comedy like Haunted Mansion to be so (presumably) bloated.
I recently went through all of Kubrick’s movies, and am amazed that his two early films Fear & Desire (1953) and Killer’s Kiss (1955) are each barely an hour long — with credits! There was a time when it was completely respectable for a movie to be that short (of course they were often part of a double feature, and sometimes with a cartoon and newsreel, and with trailers — which came after the movie hence the name). Of course Kubrick also directed Barry Lyndon (1975) which was over three hours long, so he wasn’t immune to the disease.
You’re not crazy, 1h45min should be the average sweet spot for the length of a movie.
John Wick is a good example
John Wick 1 : 1h41 min, 2: 2h06, 3: 2h11, 4: 2h49min…
(John Wick 4 is a monumental drag of a movie, I had to stop after 45 min because I couldn’t just go through 2hours more of this shite.)
This is my main defence of Multiverse of Madness. I don’t understand why people think longer runtime = better if the topic is superhero film. MoM was the shortest film of phase 4 and it was a roller coaster ride I could turn my brain off for 90 minutes. I’m not a Snyderverse fan pretending there was some deep deep message baked into the snyder cut…. I just want to be honest about how I hope to be entertained and not because my heads not all the way up my ass it didn’t matter who the cameos in that film were. It’s amazing how much better that film becomes when one takes their head out of their ass about what cameos they expected. There’s some weird culture behind a genre film not seeming “valid” if it isn’t 2-3 hours long… As much as I like The Batman with R-Patz I was surprised that they announced a sequel because it felt like I watched an entire trilogy in that theatre waiting for that film to end.
“.. As much as I like The Batman with R-Patz I was surprised that they announced a sequel because it felt like I watched an entire trilogy in that theatre waiting for that film to end.”
That’s the only part of my comment that matters. I hear you.
> This is just a good, old, family film
Well, a family film, anyways
Why didn’t this release in October?
My money’s on them using it as a tentpole October release on Disney+.
Early summer burn off?
Because some genius at Disney thought “Barbie? No one’s going to want to see that!”
Crazy to think the only screen adaptation of the ride that people will like is the Muppet one.
The Muppets are really the perfect vehicle for an adaptation like this. They can easily manage the tonal shifts and 4th wall winking required and come pre-packaged with exactly what a ride most sorely lacks – beloved characters with actual personalities. Instead of trying to follow that with a “real” Haunted Mansion movie, they should have continued with the Muppets on Big Thunder or Epcot or something.
A Muppet Big Thunder Mountain is a great idea.
Wasn’t Big Thunder Mountain itself already a spinoff from “Song of the South?”
Of course, like Orobourous, Disney could very easily eat its own tail.
Splash Mountain was a spin-off of Song of the South.
Big Thunder Mountain isn’t tied to any other franchises, it’s just a western-themed runaway train roller coaster.
You’re thinking of the next door (recently cancelled) ride, Splash Mountain.
The poster needs to be done in the style of a 1940s/50s westerns like Thunder Mountain (1946) or Ghost Riders of the West ( 1946) with the title being: Big Thunder Muppet Mountain (thunder of course being crudely crossed out and the word Muppet written, also crudely, directly above it).
Is the film as visually dark and drab as the trailers make it seem? Honest to goodness, I can’t see shit.
“Brought to you by the same lighting levels you loved in Quantumania…”
Most of the film has a pretty varied color palette, but nearly every ghost is in all blues, so there are some scenes that coincidentally look a lot like Curse of the Black Pearl whenever they’ve got ghosts moving around at night.
I’m not the world’s biggest del Toro fan. I think he’s a bit overrated (and I hated Nightmare Alley.)That said, if del Toro wants to do a “Haunted Mansion” movie….LET HIM! Good god, that should have been the easiest hire in motion picture history. Who cares if it was going to be a little “too scary” for six-year-olds? Better that than this absolutely-for-no-one pablum.
Crimson Peak?
What about it….?
I, too, hated Nightmares Alley. Every turn was entirely predictable within minutes. There was nothing to like.Crimson Peak, too. Beautiful, but so dull.
You do realize Nightmare Alley (2021) is a remake of the 1947 movie, itself based on the novel, right? I don’t think it needed to be remade, but given that so many movies since have copied it, it’s a bit unfair to call the story predictable.
My big issue with Nightmare Alley was that Del Toro tried to make material that was essentially noir with the slightest of supernatural undertones and turn it into a full on supernatural thriller. The material really didn’t support it. That and somehow you have to accept that a depression era sleazy carnival has a state of the art haunted house ride.
How did he turn it into a “full on supernatural thriller”? Did you watch a completely different movie? It’s not that different to the original or the book, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing supernatural about any of it.
I do realize that. That context doesn’t make it a better film in the 2020s.
Feels like the movie should have had less characters and just focus on Wilson and stanfield
Just throw your kids into the deep end and take them to see ‘Talk to Me’ instead.
For a ride set around New Orleans, the Haunted Mansion has always seemed extremely white
I wasn’t aware the Haunted Mansion was supposed to be “set” anywhere, just a spooky house. The more you know, I guess…
I always thought if it was set anywhere it was Georgia since the exterior of the mansion was based on two old estates in Savannah.
I’m always put off by a review that immediately swerves to their race gripes before anything else.Not quality, not sets, not story. Just BAM “too white”.I’m sure this isn’t a great film, and the review is probably accurate, but you can’t help but feel they went into the film with a superfluous agenda and worked backwards.
Yeah, the reviewers here are generally idiots with no ability to write about anything other than race grievance bs.
> You can’t help but feel they went into the film with a superfluous agenda and worked backwards.
No shit, it’s the AV Club in the Year of Our Lord 2023
The OG one in Disneyland is an old plantation house in New Orleans Square. The ones in Florida and Tokyo are more Colonial America and espouse Dutch Gothic elements. The Phantom Manor in Paris is in Frontierland and is in Second Empire style.
So each haunted mansion looks different and takes its style from different implied settings. The one in Disneyland is actually based on an estate in Baltimore, Maryland. The one in Disney World is supposed to be set in New Orleans, so Luke is not wrong there. That said, the look of the building is just meant as immediate visual character, not any particular cultural influence.
Pretty sure the WDW one (set in colonial/New England Liberty Square and not New Orleans Square like Disneyland) isn’t meant to be New Orleans based…
I just posted the same thing, much later and less eloquently!
Disney World is not New Orleans, as has been pointed out. It’s in Liberty Square, which has an east coast, colonial vibe and, as such, it has an east coast feel.
The Disneyland Haunted Mansion is located in “New Orleans Square”. The Haunted Mansion in Disney World is more generically gothic. I only recently became aware that they are actually different between the parks. EDIT: I see now that this was already answered, so nevermind.
I saw the trailer before the Barbie movie last week and good heavens does it look dreadful. I mean just awful. If you can’t scrap together 3 quality minutes of film for a trailer, then what dreck much the actual movie be?
I’m kind of surprised this wasn’t sent straight to Disney Plus.
I cannot for the life of me imagine how it got out of development, let alone made it all the way to being a feature film released in theaters. It looks that bad.
diversity hire director.
I can’t wait until they finally adapt Galaxy’s Edge into a franchise.
They could call it “Star Conflict.”
Here’s some money, go see a Star conflict.
Star Police Action
Star Use of Force Authorization
Space Battles!
“Planetary Police Actions.”
I’ll still give it a watch. I’m up for anything LaKeith Stanfield is in, though I hope he’s given better stuff to work with in the future.
Too bad, I genuinely hoped that this would be at least entertaining to watch…
Honestly, Disney should have made this in 1967 with Don Knotts, Dean Jones and Paula Prentiss with a score by Vic Mizzy.
Just adapt The Ghost and Mister Chicken to The Haunted Mansion setting, and you’re 90% of the way there. That said, I cringe at what modern Hollywood would do to a remake of that classic Don Knotts film.They also could have remade Gene Wilder’s Haunted Honeymoon by making the Haunted Mansion into an AirBnB for the film, though the original has some pacing issues of its own.
Can we all finally agree once and for all that fucking Tiffany Haddish should never be on film again?She’s a car wreck of an actor and quite possibly one of the un-funniest people working today.End this national nightmare.
Holy hell a 2 hour movie based off of a damn theme park ride? What in the actual fuck?
I cannot fathom why they keep doing this. Yes, “Pirates” made boatloads (ha!) of money, but it was only barely related to the ride. Every other time they’ve tried to adapt a ten-minute ride into a two hour movie it’s been a mess.
I suppose we can be grateful that this is one of the few kinds of properties Disney hasn’t tried to work into a Cinematic universe. No ghost of Jack Sparrow in the Haunted Mansion or a hastily shoehorned Jungle Cruise end credit scene.
Coming soon to D+: “Mr. Toad: The Wildest Rides”, a 6-part series
Odd headline… “frightfully unfunny”. What are the expectations for kids horror…? Was this supposed to be funny/hilarious? That seems very confused. It seemed more like this was trying to be quirky than funny which confuses me too. Why do adults think kids find Owen Wilson scary? Why even make horror for kids if were this lost on how to approach the topic…? This film just looks embarrassing. It’s a weird trend too the Goosebumps film looked like this….
The 2003 movie does not get “undue hate”. It was and still is a terrible movie that should never have been made. There was nothing “Haunted Mansion” about it while this new one at least LOOKS like it should have that title.