The Haunted Mansion (2003)

The Haunted Mansion arrives from 2003, a Disney product assembled from a theme park attraction and a paycheck. Eddie Murphy plays Jim Evers, a Louisiana realtor whose workaholism drags his family into a rain-soaked manor full of ghosts, secret passages, and a butler with a grudge. Rob Minkoff directs with the brisk indifference of a man fulfilling a contract. The reviews at the time were unkind, the box office was respectable, and the decades since have promoted it to cult Halloween staple. This is the career arc of a film that offends no one and moves no one.

The single item of cultural interest here is the casting. A Black family sits at the center of a mainstream Disney family film, and the studio's motivation appears to have been the star, not a statement. Race is never mentioned, never thematized, never made a subject. The Evers family is simply a family, which is its own quiet achievement and also the limit of the film's ambitions. Sara works as Jim's business partner, though the plot demotes her to a threatened bride and a vessel for a dead woman's soul. The moral is family over career, delivered without a single finger wag.

Beyond that, the cupboard is bare. No sermonizing, no historical correction, no environmental lament, no lecture of any kind. The film wants only to sell tickets and move merchandise, and it does so with a B CinemaScore and a 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. We classify it, we file it, and we move on to the next vintage.