The Haunted Mansion

A fright show artfully designed for the whole family, a comedy that all but the most impressionable children will likely get a kick out of.

It's notoriously difficult to balance lighthearted humor with the spookiness a good ghost story requires, but director Rob Minkoff is surprisingly successful, delivering a satisfying mix of laughs and mild scares aimed at a young audience.

It is spectacularly average. Neither an inspired reimagining nor a painful dud,

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.

Tame and witless enough to make me long for the ancient, dusty fright kitsch of ''The Munsters.''

This mostly laugh-and scare-free turkey offers an utterly bored -- and boring -- Eddie Murphy taking a back seat to special effects, elaborate sets and a wispy story slapped together by David Berenbaum (the overrated "Elf").

The film equivalent of the dark, boring period on a haunted house ride before the gondola crashes into another room filled with dirty mirrors.

I found the movie mildly enjoyable and it did have its brief moments that made it shine, but it really does not live up to the potential of what it could have been. A real shame. Aside from Eddie Murphy, everyone else is utterly forgettable and poorly executed. The special effects are average at best relying on old school gimmicks in a modern age, and it shows. Set pieces on the other hand are quite stunning and the movie actually does feel like an amusement park ride. Overall: An average movie that might be good as a rental for the kids (really young kids.)

This is not really bad but not good either. There is some fan service but not as well done as the 2023 version. It's actually pretty slow with too much time where nothing really happens. The mausoleum is pretty intense and the ending is fun but not a lot else happens. The child actors are noticeably worse than the adults at acting which is fine. The characters are all basic and similar. There are some funny moments which helped me not lose attention. There certainly are worse ways to spend 85 minutes, I didn't hate it but it's below average.

If you need to kill ninety minutes with harmless seasonal movie fare, The Haunted Mansion fits the bill. It doesn’t overachieve, but it also doesn’t insult. After all, this is a Disney Halloween feature starring Eddie Murphy, more than a decade after he flamed out as a hip leading man, so set your expectations accordingly. Escorting two kids and a little-too-young wife into a cobwebby old estate, Murphy encounters ghosts, opens trap doors and takes advice from a crystal ball. He shrieks, he runs, he gets mixed up in an old dispute between resident phantoms. Nothing to light anybody’s world on fire, but at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome or stretch to make room for any force-fed sequels. I can picture the idea men sitting around their conference room table now. “Well, Pirates of the Caribbean did pretty well for us... what other rides do we have kicking around the park?” I don’t think anyone was fooling themselves into thinking Murphy would suddenly deliver a transcendent performance to match Johnny Depp’s here. They cast him, and paid him, to show up, act a little childish and look/sound like Eddie Murphy, which he does. Looking for something more than that? Look elsewhere.

Eddie Murphy really needs to get his act together. In the 80's and 90's he made some pretty funny and thrilling movies, but now he makes worthless POS films. (Daddy Day Care, A Thousand Words, Norbit, Imagine That, Meet Dave, Showtime, I could go on forever). This movie is just another one of those waste-of-time, brainless movies that you wonder how the hell got made. I'm so glad Murphy decided to take on the Shrek franchise, because that's about the only good 21st century movie he's made. Also, Tower Heist was okay.

Moronic, sophomoric, campy, unfunny, abhorrent. Every word coming out of Eddie Murphy's mouth is like someone excreting into my ears. The special effects are far below par. Everything about this movie made me want to leave the theatre, but I don't waste any bit of money, so I slowly tortured myself in order not to have thrown away twenty bucks. I will throw this movie down into the f**king pits for all it deserves if I can forget it. But my memory, unfortunately, is too good.