Happy National Cinema Day!

When I discovered that my local Cinemark was participating in the National Cinema Day festivities, I decided that I should go to a movie this afternoon. You can hardly beat $4 dollar tickets to a new release movie.

I am so very happy that I only spent $4 per ticket for this movie. I may have overpaid.

The latest film from Liam Neeson is Retribution (which by the way, that title has no relevance to the story at all). I had originally thought this was going to be similar to the Keanu Reeves pic Speed, but Speed was a lot of fun. The only connection to Speed was there was a motor vehicle and there was a bomb.

When we get a Liam Neeson action flick, there is an understanding that the audience will have to suspend some disbelief in order to enjoy the movie, but this film had me rolling my eyes and wondering how dumb these characters (all of them) actually were.

Liam Neeson gets in his car to go to work one morning, but he has to take his troublesome children to school first. Unfortunately, he gets a call on a mysterious phone and the disguised voice on the other end tells him that there is a bomb beneath his seat triggered when he sat down and if he did not do exactly what he said, he would detonate it remotely.

The bomber then sent Liam driving around the city doing inane things and blowing up other vehicles.

This was so dumb. Worse than dumb, this was predictable. I figured out the face behind the scheme immediately and I spotted the supposedly smart trick in the film. It was painfully apparent.

I thought Liam Neeson was pretty poor in his performance. I have seen Liam Neeson in better (and even worse) action movies where he gave a solid performance. Unlike most of Neeson’s films, in this one, I felt his performance just did not rise above the material.

Liam Neeson’s kids were played by Jack Champion (who was Spider in Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water and the kid on the bike in Avengers: Endgame. This film will not be anywhere near those in box office) and Lilly Aspell (young Diana in Wonder Woman & WW84). The kids were fine, but so much of the dialogue was so poorly written and cliched that they did not have a chance to make anything out of these roles.

Matthew Modine is the other well-known actor involved here as Liam Neeson’s best friend and boss.

This is one of those movies where the plot could be overcome in five minutes if the characters would just react in reasonable ways. I would never answer a strange cell phone that had ‘unknown caller’ listed. If Liam Neeson just ignored the phone, everything is wrecked. Why did Liam Neeson believe that the bomber could see what he was doing? He never once gave him any evidence of that. I was constantly thinking, “no way the bomber can see him.” That took me out of the little bit of tension that the film generated.

There were so many flaws in this movie, it felt as if people involved were just going through the motions in order to get paid. Good for them… but bad for me.

1.7 stars

I was not anxious to see this movie. Based on a true story, Gran Turismo is a video game that simulates the process of auto racing, and the film tells the story of some gamers who attempted to become actual race car drivers after mastering the game.

I am not a fan of auto racing in any form. I have not enjoyed very many movies on the topic either. Outside of Rush and Ford v. Ferrari, there are not many that I have even seen (I’m not counting the old Herbie movies because they all blend together).

So with low anticipation I went to see Gran Turismo today and it was okay.

The standout was clearly David Harbour, who played Jack Salter, the man with a dark past who was entrusted to determine which of the gamers would win the contest and then help that racer become the best they could be. Harbour is always great and he brings his typical strong performance to this movie. The character had some surface traits, but the big hidden piece to the character was fairly obvious and did not seem to really hit hard when revealed. However, Harbour was very fun and did a lot for this character that was not on the page.

Gamer to racer Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) was a teenage Gran Turismo player who won the Nissan motorsport division’s GT Academy, a competition to find the best sim player and turn him/her into a race driver. Mardenborough had some solid scenes and he was easy to watch. He was believable as the teen and he had some decent scenes, especially with Djimon Hounsou, who played Jann’s disapproving father.

However, the other big name actor in the film was Orlando Bloom, who played Danny Moore, who was a marketing executive at Nissan. When you cast an actor of the stature of Orlando Bloom, you should have something vital for him to do. Sadly, Orlando Bloom felt very wasted in this film and this role could have gone to anybody.

The racing scenes were all very well done and did a great job of building excitement and uncertainty of the race, highlighting the dangers of the sport.

The movie is a basic sports movie, with many of those types of clichés solidly in place. Jann is the typical underdog story, having to overcome the obstacles that the sport, the competition and fate throw into his path. It certainly has that structure of sports movies, but the execution of that structure is decent. The soundtrack was well constructed and added to the film.

Director Neill Blomkamp brings an enjoyable film that, while it has its problems. is a lot of fun to watch.

3.5 stars

What a wild ride.

Medusa Deluxe is a murder mystery set at a British competitive hairdressing contest. One contestant is found dead and scalped. The other contestants, models and lovers interact as the uncertainty of what happened washes over them.

The plot itself is not the most important aspect of this film. The flamboyant atmosphere and over-the-top characters dominate the screen.

The other true star of this film is the director, Thomas Hardiman, who made his directorial feature debut with this A24 film. His film was shot as it was a one-shot throughout. It clearly was not and I enjoyed picking out the hidden cuts, but it is a big swing to attempt to do this as your debut. Plus, it was done so well that if you did not know much about filmmaking, you could believe that they just followed the actors with the camera. It was smooth and beautifully constructed. This was a remarkable debut as a director.

The performances are all excellent. Some of the characters are strange, but every actor does an exceptional job. Standouts included Clare Perkins, who played Cleve, a hairdresser with a serious anger problem, Luke Pasqualino as Angel, the lover of the victim, and Harriet Webb as Kendra, another of the hairdressers.

There are some really strange things happen too as the movie progresses. There is a dance routine at the end of the film that is just amazing.

Now, the murder mystery does fade as the film goes. The story itself is a little weak and does not feel like the most important part of the film. However, the dialogue is spectacular, the characters are eccentric and bizarre, and the film’s technical aspects are just excellent. There are also some impressive stunts and a scene involving fire that is outstanding.

This is an original film with some of the most creative moments in it.

I rented this film on Vudu.

4.35 stars

The latest DC movie dropped this weekend as the superhero known as Blue Beetle made his big screen debut. I do like Jaime Reyes, the most recent version of the character of the Blue Beetle in the DC Comics.

I also liked the new Blue Beetle movie, though I did not love it. It was extremely watchable and worth the time.

This is basically the origin of Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) and how he came about having the Scarab, a powerful alien artifact that gives Jaime a dangerous weapon and armor. Kord Industries head Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) wanted to possess the Scarab as well and she had a plan to use it to create weapons for sale.

Xolo Maridueña was wonderfully cast as Jaime. Maridueña, one of the main stars of Netflix’s series Cobra Kai, has a charismatic presence and carries himself as a star. Some of the over-the-top acting in the third act was not the best from Maridueña, but it did not pull me away from the film.

Jaime’s family was a huge piece of the film, and brought some of the most emotional aspects of the story. Uncle Rudy was played by George Lopez. Rudy was distrustful of the government and was experimenting in his brother’s home. Alberto and Rocio (Damien Alcazar and Elpidia Carrillo), Jaime’s parents, his sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), and his grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza) all lived together.

The idea behind this family is very much Latino and I did not relate as much to them as I might have. Some of the cheesiest aspects of the movie were centered around the family especially including some of the unexpected skills shown by Uncle Rudy and Nana. The movie required the audience to really extend the suspension of disbelief. It is something that you really have to get past in order to enjoy the movie. I was really not a fan of the character of Milagro at first, but I came around to her as the film went on. The family grew on me as the film went on and I was able to get past the strangeness.

The special effects are pretty good and the action was really fun. There were some times when I had a difficult time hearing what Jaime was saying, but that was the only drawback to these scenes.

I mentioned earlier about some emotional scenes and there were some very powerful ones and these very some of the best scenes of the movie. No spoilers to the content of these scnes, but you’ll know them when they come around.

The humor of the film was hit and miss. Again, as with several of the other criticisms I have levied with this movie, the humor was not something that stuck out as a major flaw. The criticisms I have of Blue Beetle were all just things that did not bother me that much.

Blue Beetle was a decent film that introduces us to a new super hero that is charming and fun to watch. It may not be the best comic book film ever, but it is an enjoyable one.

3.6 stars

Typically, movies that focus on pee, poop, puke and penis jokes are not my favorites. However, when a film has those jokes and it is funny, I can excuse that style of jokes.

Strays is not an example of that. I found little funny about this movie.

Cruel owner Doug (Will Forte) hated the little dog Reggie (Will Farrell) that he got to impress a girl. When the girl was gone, he would try to dump the dog in different locations, but Reggie always found his way back home. When Doug took him to the city and deserted him, Reggie met other stray dogs, Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park) who befriend Reggie.

There were a couple of potentially funny moments in the film, but all the one that were potentially funny were shown in the trailers. The rest of the film may have had a couple of chuckles, but nothing that were worthy of laughs.

I will also say that the voice acting was spot on for these characters, which one would expect from the talented crew doing this work. I also thought the relationships between the four strays were solid and developed well, providing some good moments of heart to he story.

It was just too crude in many instances and the crude humor was just not funny. Because of that, it felt to be too dull of a story and the unfunny bits were more corny and disappointing than anything else.

It was a short run time, yet I felt like I was ready for it to be done early on. There were some good character moments, but nothing that held any real depth to it. when the crude jokes did not hit, which was most of the time, the film had little else to fall back on.

2 stars

Today I went back to AMC in Dubuque for the first time since prior to the pandemic. AMC had a film that I had never seen advertised anywhere. It was a sci-fi story called The Pod Generation.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “In a not-so-distant future, AI is all the rage and nature is becoming a distant memory. Tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share pregnancy on a more equal footing via detachable artificial wombs, or pods. But at what cost? Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a New York couple, are ready to take their relationship to the next level and start a family. Rachel’s work gives them a chance to fast-track to the top of the Pegazus waiting list. But Alvy, a botanist and devoted purist has doubts. Nonetheless, his love for Rachel prompts him to take a leap of faith. And so begins the wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world with all its twists, turns, and bumps along the way.“

Honestly, the sci-fi aspects of the film were very odd. The film felt very modern with the exception of this weird pregnancy thing.

I found this to be overlong. It was almost two hours and I think it needed to cut that down to about an hour and forty minutes or so. Some of the early scenes were dull at times. Then the ending came out of nowhere and it was just done. I’m not sure the main plotline was fully dealt with.

However, I loved Chiwetel Ejiofor in this. He was remarkably charming and relatable in every scene as he bonded with the pod. Without him, this would not have been an enjoyable film at all. Emilia Clarke was solid too. I liked how it played against type having her not immediately bond with the pod and seeing how other pregnant women, especially those who were having the natural way, bonded with their child. That was clearly lacking for Clarke and she played that confusion well.

I do think that the movie had some really big ideas with its themes, but I do not think that the film reached those goals at any point in the time. It feels like a film that could have been better with another run or two through the editing bay.

Still, Ejiofor is great and does have some good chemistry with Clarke. There are some funny moments and the film gets credit for trying something different.

2.7 stars

So this film turned out to be much different than I expected it to be.

Milton (Ben Kingsley) is an older man living alone, beginning to show signs of forgetting things that worries his daughter Denise (Zoe Winters). One day, a spaceship crashed landed in Milton’s backyard and he finds an alien on his back step. Taking the alien inside, Milton bonds with the silent spaceman despite some of his comments to other people in the town lead to Denise doubting whether Milton could take care of himself anymore.

There are some parts of the premise for this movie that made me iffy about it. Specifically, the choice for the alien, eventually named Jules, to be silent is always a challenge. With one character that is verbal and the other character that is non-verbal makes it difficult to connect. However, the film does a smart thing and gives Kingsley two verbal connections in the film in Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris, as the characters of Joyce and Sandy respectfully, to interact with.

Truthfully, this film is not about Jules. It is about the three human characters and the loneliness that they feel. Jules is just the catalyst of the plot to bring Milton, Joyce and Sandy into their own orbits and to examine their personal issues at a deeper level. Each of the three characters brought a different set of troubles that were very familiar to any person, especially those of an advancing age.

I absolutely loved Harriet Sansom Harris in this film. She was such a warm and loving person who seemed to find such a connection with Jules, something that she was missing in her life. Harris is a great actor and she had excellent chemistry with Ben Kingsley. Kingsley was also excellent here as a lot of his acting came with some specific non-verbal moments, with glances and looks that told more than just his words could. Jane Curtin had less to do in the story, but she did knock home what she got to do.

The relationships were the key, but the plot itself was not working near as well. In fact, a lot of the plot of the film seemed just in the way, in particular part of the story that involved a government agency. There was also a story beat involving cats that was simply weird.

So while the film does not come together very well, the strength of the ensemble really works. This is much more of a character piece than a sci-fi movie. There are some funny moments and some deeper than expected ideas. Though everything does not necessarily work well together and I may not have loved the ending, the strength of Kingsley, Harris and Curtin made me want to know what was to become of these characters and that is a success for a film.

3.4 stars

Dracula returns in a manner in which we have never seen him before in the latest horror film called The Last Voyage of the Demeter from director André Øvredal, known for 2010’s Troll Hunter and 2016’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe.

This story is adapted from a chapter of the original Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, detailing the voyage of a ship that transported Dracula from Romania to London. This film goes into more specific details of the crew of the Demeter and the victims of the ill-fated ship.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter creates a creepy atmosphere and goes all-in on some choices that were surprising and unexpected in the narrative. It basically took the character of Dracula and looked at it more as a monster that the crew of the Demeter were desperately trying to survive.

The film, for the most part, looked really great. Its dark mood was translated with the use of the shots on the ship and it built a hopeless feel with its claustrophobic setting. The full shots of the ship on the sea was consistently beautiful giving us the feel of how trapped the sailors must have been.

Most of the performances were well done. Corey Hawkins was the lead protagonist, Dr. Clemens, who had a strength throughout the film. The Demeter captain, Eliot was played by Liam Cunningham, who brought a soulfulness to this character, trying to maintain his leadership through a terrible loss. David Dastmalchian played Wojchek, the second in command. Dastmalchian never fails to be excellent. The young actor Woody Norman, who played Toby, has some difficult scenes to carry out and does an admirable job of it. I should also shout out the performance of Stefan Kapicic who has some of the best and most frightening scenes of the film.

Now, there are some problems with the film. It is about 15-20 minutes too long. There was a repetitiveness that comes from the length. Even shaving off about 10 minutes would have helped the narrative. The finale of the third act was not as well done as the remainder of the film. Some of it just felt like they needed to end with a big confrontation and it did not all work.

There was a lot of really positive things in the film, but a lot of it just does not tied together too well. One of the issues I had was that none of these people, even the Cambridge-educated doctor, seemed to be very smart. Maybe I brought my own Vampire-lore knowledge into the film and these people would not have the prior background knowledge I had about vampires, but it seemed as if there was enough physical evidence that occurred during the film that they could have formulated a better, more effective plan than the silly one they eventually came up with at the end.

The movie was the most effective when it focused on the psychological aspects of the situation instead of the action beats.

Still, I found it to be mostly entertaining, included a great character design for Dracula and some truly brutal moments that were bloody and a couple that hit hard.

3.2 stars

A movie that had been filmed five years ago was dropped on Netflix last week and had some initial success. Hidden Strike featured a team-up between John Cena and Jackie Chan.

According to IMDB, “Two ex-special forces soldiers must escort a group of civilians along Baghdad’s “Highway of Death” to the safety of the Green Zone.“

This is not a great movie. It is not the worst thing I have seen, but it definitely depends on the personalities of John Cena and Jackie Chan to get by and, unfortunately, the writing does not give them much help because some of the dialogue is eye-rollingly bad.

There is a lot of action, specifically with hand-to-hand fights featuring Cena and Chan. There is nothing here that we haven’t seen before and better.

There was a lot of poor CGI in this movie too with some very ugly work. Not only in the fighting sections, but some areas that were painfully obvious green screen.

The chemistry between the two main leads help to make this a serviceable thriller, but so much more could have been done with this film. There was a reason why it hadn’t been released until it was dropped on Netflix.

2.5 stars

When I saw the trailer for Meg 2: The Trench and Jason Statham used his legs to hold off one of the megalodons, I knew what kind of movie this was going to be. Sadly, the reality of Meg 2: The Trench did not reach that expectation.

In one of the worst movies of 2023 so far, this sequel truly is filled with nonsensical decisions, both on screen and behind the camera.

Jason Statham is back, now as a environmental warrior, trying to keep the oceans clean while the group he is tied with continues to investigate the Trench, the place where the prehistoric sharks live. When they headed down into the Trench on a mission to explore a section, they come across a giant megalodon and also discover an undersea base that they had no idea was there.

After an explosion set off by one of the film’s nondescript villains traps them under a landslide, the crew has to walk across the ocean floor to the station, hoping to avoid the Megs and other ocean faring monsters. This sequence is just horrible. It is hard to see a lot of what happens and it did not look like they were underwater at all.

Let’s talk about the positives of this movie….

Um…

Well…

It was mostly in focus.

To be fair, some of the film looked pretty good. It was not the greatest CGI I have ever seen, but it was not the worst either. There were some pretty apparent green screen scenes though.

The last 20 minutes or so had a fairly cheesy shark battle, which is what the whole film should have been about. Yes, the ending sequence in the third act was cheesy in nature, and some of the actors involved seemed to know that was what the film was, but some of the things that happened were so dumb and impossible that even for this type of a film, it was too much.

I will say that the scene with Jason Statham’s super strong legs did look a little better in context as there were some chains involved that I did not see in the trailer, so it is not completely inane.

However, what there was not too much of in Meg 2 was sharks. The first two acts of this film had a minimal amount of Megs in a Meg movie. There really was much more of plot involving the human characters and the espionage and betrayal of said human characters. The villains in the movie so just so cardboard cutout that they created zero tension or conflict. I think one of the villains (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) may have actually twirled his mustache once.

The dialogue of Meg 2 was terrible. Nobody talks like they had these characters talk. Then you throw in some of the most cringeworthy one-liners from Statham and some of the other actors, and it only fails even more.

Meg 2 was also almost two hours long, which was really 30-40 minutes too long. The first half was just boring and dragged along with these uninspiring and uninteresting characters that we have no connection with in a plot that had to do with illegal underwater mining instead of Meg fighting.

Then, if you saw the trailers for Meg 2, you have seen absolutely every minute of any scene with the shark that could be considered cool, even a little bit.

I did laugh several times, but I was laughing at the movie and not with the movie. There was no humor in the flick… at least, intentional humor.

As I was coming out of the theater, I heard a young boy, probably around 9 or 10, say that this was his favorite movie of the summer. I believe that because that is about the level that Meg 2: The Trench is fishing for.

0.75 stars

The WWE has always done solid documentaries about their WWE Superstars. Their latest venture debuted this week on Peacock and features a legacy performer who has been one of the top performers in the ring recently.

Cody Rhodes was a wrestler who spent the first ten years in the WWE, but reached a point where he could not see a path for him to escape the midcard in the company, and he chose to bet on himself by leaving the WWE and going out into the world of the independents, smaller organizations around the country/world.

This led to Cody, matching up with some other wrestlers (The Young Bucks in particular) and forming an alternative wrestling company in AEW.

Then, when his contract came up with AEW, Cody Rhodes made a return to the WWE at Wrestlemania 38, taking a new turn in his wrestling career.

This documentary does an excellent job of showing us who Cody Rhodes is and how he wound up getting to the point where he is one of the most over stars in the profession.

Cody spoke from his heart, an interview that was at the center of the doc, and displayed true emotion when discussing areas of his life and career that make him such a compelling figure to the fans.

One of the bets parts of the documentary was the discussion of Cody’s relationship with his father, wrestling legend “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. The relationship between Dusty and Cody was complex and comes across so real and genuine in the doc that it easily stands out as the highlight.

Another epic moment was the discussion of the moment when Cody tore his pec muscle during training a few days before he was scheduled to perform in a match with Seth Rollins inside a Hell in the Cell, a brutal cage match. The imagery of the bruised pec was one of the moments that define who Cody Rhodes is.

There were plenty of interviews with other WWE stars for the doc, giving their thoughts on Cody Rhodes including Randy Orton, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Triple H, Diamond Dallas Page, The Undertaker to name a few.

Cody comes off as a family man, whose family means the world to him and as a driven professional who wants to become the top of the wrestling community.

The doc does a great job of covering everything from his career, from his days wrestling in high school to his defeat at Wrestlemania 39.

4 stars

G’day, mate.

I had no idea this was an Australian production. I also did not know that Australian horror movie productions were so freaky and scary.

Talk to Me is the latest horror movie that proves that teenagers, especially older teens, do dumb shit.

According to the official synopsis, “When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and opens the door to the spirit world forcing them to choose who to trust: the dead or the living“

This movie was very tense and filled with suspense and real scares, and it did it with a limited number of jump scares (if any at all). The scares come from the characters and what is happening to them, not just something jumping out from the dark.

The cast is excellent in portraying these horrors throughout. The cast is led by Sophie Wilde, who played the main protagonist Mia, Alexandra Jensen as Mia’s best friend Jade, and Jade’s younger brother Riley, played by Joe Bird. These three carry the heavy load of the film and they do an excellent job with it.

I absolutely believe that these kids do this hand thing, welcoming spirits into their bodies, in order to film it and put it on the internet. I have seen way too many challenges that get picked up by this age group on YouTube or TikTok to find it hard to accept.

I did have some difficulties in the details of the plot, as some of the rules that are laid out are not very sensical. I would also say that the wrap up of the storyline is a touch messy for my tastes.

The visuals of the film are very well done, look great and do their job as a way to be scary or disturbing.

The film also goes out of its way to give these character backgrounds, especially Mia whose tragic background is vital for the film to work.

Talk to Me is a solid film from A24 from first time directors Danny and Michael Philippou. They deliver a atmospheric film with disturbing imagery and some excellent acting from the young cast.

3.75 stars

I got a chance to see an early showing today of the new animation film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. The Turtles have had many feature films in their franchise over the years, but this is the first time we get a full length animated film.

The Turtles were young teens who were craving to be above ground and out of the sewers among the humans despite their father, Splinter (Jackie Chan), hating the humans. The Turtles decided to attempt to stop major criminal Superfly (Ice Cube) so the world would see them as heroes instead of monsters.

There was quite a large and very accomplished group of voice actors involved along with the couple that I have already mentioned. These voice actors included Nicholas Cantu, Brady Noon, Micha Abbey and Shamon Brown Jr (who were the Turtles) and John Cena, Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, Ayo Edebiri, Rose Byrne, Giancarlo Esposito, Maya Rudolph, Post Malone, Hannibal Buress, and Natasia Demetriou.

The best part of this new film is clearly the animation style. The film must have been inspired by the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse films, Mutant Mayhem has amazing artistic frames with bright colors and awesome backgrounds. I did have some problems with the fight animations, especially in the third act big battle because they had so many mutants involved (as well as other characters) that it felt like it was difficult to see what was happening. It reminded me of some of the big battles in Transformers franchises at times.

One of the things that I really enjoyed was the idea that the Turtles were actually portrayed as teenagers. This is something that they have never really done before and this was a new take on these characters because of it.

The story of the movie was okay, but it was not the standout aspect of this film. There was some good humor and the film re-contextualized these characters for a new generation. It ended on a perfect note for a sequel too.

4 stars

Ron Perlman is back as a retired assassin who has taken up a bakery business, but is forced back into action when his son leaves his daughter with him and then gets killed. It is a revenge story mixed with the loving family relationships (sort of).

This film is not very good. I did like Ron Perlman and Emma Ho, who played Perlman’s granddaughter Delphi, together. They had a sweet chemistry and they did work well as a pair. Emma Ho did a nice job despite not speaking for most of the movie because of a trauma she had suffered a few years prior. This is easily the best part of the film.

Otherwise, the character of “The Baker” was very much like multiple characters we have seen over the years with not much new added to the mix.

The story was as you would expect. I have seen this done dozens of times, and most of them better. There are so many implausible moments that it overwhelms the good parts with Perlman and Ho.

Harvey Keitel is here playing the same character he plays in most of his movies. He is totally wasted. However, Keitel does appear in the most bizarre and unexpectedly silly mid-credit scene that I won’t spoil, but will have you trying to figure out why the creative people behind the film tacked this on.

Things happen without explanation and the entire plot was just tossed out to see what stuck. As I said, Perlman and Ho were engaging together and I wish there was more substance to that part of the story because they certainly could have elevated this movie to something more than just a clichéd revenge film.

2 stars

I watched the first Haunted Mansion film starring Eddie Murphy about a year and a half ago during the DailyView here on EYG. It had a terrible word of mouth and a low Rotten Tomatoes score, but I did not hate it. I went in with ow expectations and enjoyed it fine. It wasn’t a great movie, but it did not come off as the horrendous film that I heard it was.

I wasn’t sure if Disney needed a new version of Haunted Mansion, but here we go anyway. This time I went to the theater and I had a similar reaction to this film. I enjoyed it enough though it was not a brilliant film.

Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase Dillon) moved into a mansion and they realized that the place was haunted and the ghosts would follow them and make them come back. Gabbie looked for help from Father Kent (Owen Wilson) who went to find Ben (LaKeith Stanfield).

Ben had developed a camera that could reportedly photograph spirits because his deceased wife (Charity Jordan) was a tour guide who showed haunted sites.

The problem was, once anyone entered the mansion, they had ghosts following them and haunting them until they came back, sufficiently trapping them in the house.

There were two more characters brought in to help with the attempt to figure out what to do. One, Tiffany Haddish played medium Harriet and Danny DeVito played Bruce, expert on local mansions who always wanted to see this one. The ‘Dream Team’ as Father Kent labeled it had to work together to try and discover what paranormal shenanigans was going on in the haunted mansion.

The ensemble cast was the strength of the film. Haddish, Stanfield, DeVito, Dawson, and Wilson were all very funny and worked well together. The film also gave time to the characters, trying to give them more than just a plot driven movie. I really appreciated the attempt to give each character (or most of them at least) more depth than you would expect. There were even some solid emotional moments that were more effective because the characters had some heft to them.

The CGI was fine, but nothing that I would write home about. The side ghosts were scary designs that would probably frighten younger kids, but would be fine for teens.

The story was a little messy, and the film was probably too long. There were some stretches in the middle that dragged a bit and could have been edited down 10-15 minutes to make the pacing sharper. However, the beginning and ending was pretty decent and moved at a good clip.

The story arc is around grief as several of the characters had to deal with loss, especially LaKeith Stanfield, who did a fantastic job in this role.

Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis appears too as the classic Haunted mansion character Madame Leota. Jamie Lee felt a little over the top in the smaller role.

There was also a section that felt like it was AI in the middle of the film, dealing with information about what had happened. I am not sure if it was AI or if it was animated, but I did notice the section.

Haunted mansion felt like a throwback to an 80s/90s special effect/ghost movie much like Michael J. Fox’s The Frighteners or Arachnophobia. It had fun moments with a great cast. It might be a little long, but the cast is enjoyable enough to make up any of the drawbacks.

This is better than the Eddie Murphy version and should be a good time for families, especially with slightly older children.

3.4 stars