'Two-Hour Dud': Disney's Newest Dumpster Fire Shredded by Critics, Cast Boycotts Premiere
The reviews for Disney’s latest high-budget family flick are pouring in — and if 2023 hadn’t already held enough pain for the entertainment giant, it looks like “Haunted Mansion” is yet another expensive mouse trap for Mickey to break a toe in.
As of Thursday morning, the PG-13-rated fantasy/comedy film based on the Disney theme park attraction has an appallingly bad 44 percent positive “Tomatometer” rating on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Compare this with the two movies that racked up big on “Barbenheimer” weekend or the latest “Mission: Impossible” iteration — the top three movies at the box office last week according to Variety, all three of which of have Tomatometer ratings of over 90 percent.
And if the reviews don’t kill it, its stars might: As the Los Angeles Times noted, the live-action film’s cast was part of the SAG-AFTRA strike, meaning its stars — LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chase Dillon, Daniel Levy and Jared Leto — were absent from Saturday’s Disneyland premiere.
Instead of Hollywood not-quite-A-listers, the event had influencers and cosplayers. Nothing can make you miss Tiffany Haddish and Danny DeVito more than YouTubers and/or creepy people who like dressing up as fictional characters.
“At the festivities in Anaheim, the sweltering heat did not keep some of the guests from donning their ride-inspired finest. Besides those in period-specific garb — such as top hats and vests — attendees in costume as the attraction’s infamous bride were spotted at New Orleans Square outside the stately mansion attraction where the red carpet was rolled out,” the Times reported.
“‘Haunted Mansion’ director Justin Simien walked the red carpet with a billowing floor-length cape.”
Simien might want to keep the disguise on for a while, given the reviews.
Even the nicer ones are a bit scathing. A B- from Entertainment Weekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker was counted as a positive review by Rotten Tomatoes, although this is the blurb they picked: “Haunted Mansion is an enjoyable, if somewhat sedate experience that is more spooky diversion than thrill ride.” Ouch.
Another “positive” review, this one from James Mottram of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post: “Anyone expecting anything more than a few jump scares and bumps in the night is going to be disappointed; in that sense, it is a credible attempt to channel the mild frights of the Disney ride into a movie.”
If that’s positivity, Disney execs are probably going to hate seeing what negativity looks like. Too bad, because the bad reviews are apparently a lot more funny than “Haunted Mansion” was.
“This version, directed by Justin Simien and written by Katie Dippold is worlds better than the Eddie Murphy disaster, but it’s not really fun, spooky or engaging enough to make much of an impression beyond the moment,” Lindsey Bahr of The Associated Press observed.
“What should have been a lighthearted, entertaining romp is instead a rather dreary, unfunny, two-hour dud,” Jeanne Kaplan at Kaplan vs. Kaplan wrote.
“Resembling a kids’-birthday-party remake of 1973’s ‘The Legend Of Hell House,’ this suffers from being not that funny or spooky,” Esquire’s Kim Newman wrote, while also noting that “[i]ts saving grace is a cast you’re happy to spend time with.” (Shame they weren’t at the premiere, alas.)
“This Haunted Mansion seems likely to be on the fast track to Disney+, which is where something of its middling entertainment value belongs,” James Berardinelli of ReelViews commented.
And Rolling Stone’s David Fear might have summed it up best: “‘Haunted Mansion’ doesn’t have one-tenth of the wit or imagination of that decades-old attraction. You will, however, definitely feel like you’ve been taken for a ride in the worst possible way.”
And yes, this version is apparently liked better than the other attempt at making the Disneyland attraction into a movie, this one featuring “Beverly Hills Cop” star and “Saturday Night Live” alum Eddie Murphy. I’ve seen that one, and I don’t think it could match this headline from Yahoo Entertainment for concision: “‘Haunted Mansion’: Critics hated 2003 Eddie Murphy version, and its star didn’t care for it either.”
But then again, being better than a cynical Eddie Murphy cash-in is hardly a case for a movie’s success. And, as ScreenRant noted, this similarly panned version of it has a surprisingly high $157 million budget. That said, the entertainment outlet also pointed out that, when costs for distribution and promotion are factored in, films generally need to earn two to three times their budget to be considered successful. Thus, a minimum of $314 million is probably needed for the studio to merely break even.
Don’t expect that to be forthcoming, if the reviews or forecasts are any indication. Box Office Pro estimates an opening of between $22 and $36 million domestically. Foreign receipts won’t manage to make that number look that much better, either.
And Disney has no shortage of failures on its plate. “Elemental,” Pixar’s latest, bombed at the box office with a record-low opening for Disney’s computer-animation division. It was the latest woke failure at the box office for a company that lost over a quarter of a billion last year on two kids’ films with LGBT propaganda shoved in families’ faces: “Lightyear” and “Strange World.”
Not that the company isn’t hurting from its other divisions, all equally woke. Disney+, the streaming service, which is bleeding subscribers, recently took a $1.5 billion tax write-down by eliminating a whole raft of programming, including prominent IPs that had recently appeared on the service, like another LGBT-tastic (noticing a trend?) reboot of the swords-and-sorcery film “Willow” and the movie “Crater.” Both were relatively recent additions — and both were savaged for their wokeness.
I’m sure there’s plenty of wokeness to be found in the nooks and crannies of “Haunted Mansion,” but the main issue seems to be terminal blandness. Moreover, with “Barbenheimer,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Sound of Freedom” out in theaters, that’s going to make “Haunted Mansion” look even less attractive. Nice work, Disney.
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