Ruthless Reviews is Incredibly Fucking Stoked to Present:
April Winchell's Review of

THE HAUNTED MANSION

Disney/Murphy/Lame

Special Ed Note: Ha ha you fuckers! (we mean other movie review sites, not our esteemed readers) We got April Motherfucking Bonafide Winchell to write for us and you're still holding your dicks/selling shit for posters.com. Take that, suck asses! That's all we wanted to say.

April Winchell loathes Disney...

When I first heard they were making The Haunted Mansion into a movie, I was horrified. Not surprised necessarily, but horrified all the same.

This movie is a perfect example of what I like to call, "The Hollywood Regurgitron". The same ideas, barfed up over and over again, slopped onto different plates, and shoved down your throat with a little parsley on top.

Until recent years, the most prolific vomit has come by way of television, which busily spins the thinnest of concepts into franchises. Saturday Night Live is a big offender, pushing out such dry turds as The Coneheads, Ladies Man and A Night at the Roxbury. But then the vomit wagon came full circle, and movie producers turned television shows like The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch into film.

Now however, we have reached a new low. Anything at Disneyland can be a movie.

It started, of course, with Pirates of the Caribbean, which did well. Buoyed by their success, Disney launched headlong into this new genre, and we can expect to see Restroom, The Movie shortly. This will be followed by The Incredible Churro Cart, and Shit, I left My Purse on the Teacups.

The very first thing you see when this movie starts is a title card that read, Beware Foolish Mortals. I couldn't have said it better myself.

The opening credit sequence could be the most interesting part of the film, particularly since Eddie Murphy isn't in it. It's all shot in the mansion during a masquerade party, giving it an Eyes Wide Shut sort of feel. That gave me a little hope, since I thought there might be some sort of kinky sex scene coming. Unfortunately, we settle into something more disturbing; an Eddie Murphy movie worse than Pluto Nash.

Eddie Murphy plays himself again in this film, only this time he's calling himself Jim Evers. Jim is a hungry real estate salesman, and like Mr. Murphy himself, he takes on all the wrong projects just for the money.

After missing his anniversary, he takes his wife and kids on a trip to the lake to make it up to them. But first, they have to make a "20 minute stop" to see an old house he's been asked to list.

Of course, we're all shocked when the locked gate opens by itself, and the creepy butler pressures them into staying for dinner. Equally shocking is the sudden storm that floods the roads, forcing the family to stay for the night. Man. Didn't see that coming.

It was at this point that I officially checked out of the film. Not so much because it was boring and not funny, but there were continuity problems that distracted me from hating the movie on its own merits.

• Why, if the family was going to the lake, were mom and dad wearing suits?
  
  
• Why, if the butler was not expecting the entire family, did he already have enough place settings for everyone?
  
  
• Why didn't they bring the bags in from the car when they decided to stay the night?
  
  
• Why is Michael Eisner still in charge of Disney?
  
  

I was brought back into the action when Eddie Murphy accidentally tips the head of a bust in the study, opening a secret passage. He walks into the room and the doors slam behind him, locking him in (though unfortunately, not for the remainder of the film).

This begins the most annoying part of the film for me; Mr. Murphy's scary trek through the Haunted Mansion. This sequence was obviously shot inside the ride, so we're treated the same landscape we've seen a million times. I half expected to see fat tourists in Bermuda shorts, eating carnation ice cream bars in Mickey Mouse hats.

At one point, he runs into Jennifer Tilly as Madam Leota, looking a lot like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror. She sets the room spinning, and suspends him in the air. As he grips the chair and attempts to look frightened, she intones, "You must first gain new sight". Eddie replies, "I must first gain new underwear". Laugh? I thought I'd never start.

When he gets out of the room, he wanders the hallways looking for the plot. At one point, he looks in a mirror, and sees a dead man. I'm sure that's what his agent sees, too.

This goes on like this for what feels like several hours. Eddie has to fight off corpses to find a key to unlock the mystery of the house, which is not such a big mystery really, since the entire thing is played out in the opening credit sequence.

I can't tell you much more, because I too was led on a strange journey in my house. I found myself sitting in another room, eating low-carb ice cream and smoking a cigarette.

Perhaps the most telling moment in the film came as Eddie Murphy's young son tried to persuade him to help the ghosts out.

"Dad", he pleads, "we have to help them".
"You can't help the dead," Eddie replies. "They're beyond help".

Regardless if the above applies to Murphy or Disney, truer words were never spoken.

Review Posted: 6.26.04

For more embarrasing photos of April Winchell, check out her site -- http://www.aprilwinchell.com/