MANSE MACABRE

Opening this weekend:

Haunted Mansion--Bereaved, bitter and a staunch nonbeliever in ghosts: These are perhaps not the optimum character traits for a tour guide of supposedly haunted houses in New Orleans. But before Ben (LaKeith Stanfield) unhappily landed in that job, he was a scientist who invented a camera intended to detect ghostly presences.

Thus Ben is drawn into a team of paranormal misfits, along with shady exorcist Father Kent (Owen Wilson), shady medium Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) and Bruce (Danny DeVito), a rumpled history professor, to help a young single mother (Rosario Dawson) and her son (Chase W. Dillon) who have moved into the title Louisiana domicile. The place isn't just a little bit haunted; this mansion is teeming with nearly a thousand unquiet spirits, tyrannically presided over by the "Hatbox Ghost" (Jared Leto).

After my visit in 1972, if you had asked my ten-year-old self which was my favorite ride at Disney World in Florida, I would probably have told you that it was the Nautilus submarine ride from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (long since retired). But the close second place would have gone to The Haunted Mansion, on which this extravagant Disney feature is based. I vividly remember riding past the mirrors and seeing a greenish spectral figure sitting between me and my sister in the car. The movie brought back other flourishes from the ride: the talking busts, the stretching portraits, the dueling ghosts.

There was an earlier film based on the ride in 2003, The Haunted Mansion (the new version's title dispenses with the definite article), starring Eddie Murphy. The current movie, directed by Justin Simien from a script by Katie Dippold, seems better to me than that forgettable effort, but unfortunately only a little better. Simien and Dippold and the actors try for a little depth of feeling along with the comedy, but the film feels poky and unfocused, and doesn't pick up much momentum until the reasonably exciting last twenty minutes or so.

Still, it's a good-hearted movie, with an engaging cast. Stanfield, chillingly haunted in Get Out, makes a sympathetic leading man here. Haddish's hoarse, hammy inflections as the soothsayer are funny, as are DeVito's blunt line readings as the prof; Dawson and young Dillon are pleasant as the hapless householders. As Madame Leota, the disembodied head in the crystal ball, Jamie Lee Curtis proves, if you'll pardon me saying so, spirited.

Mild as this Haunted Mansion is--I can't imagine it being truly scary to any but the littlest moviegoers--I was a bit startled, and amused, by its subtext. When we finally get some backstory on the Hatbox Ghost, there are striking paralells to another power-hungry figure who stubbornly refuses to depart from the contemporary American psyche. It could be that our nation's most perniciously haunted mansion these days is Mar-A-Lago.

A LEGO UP

Opening this weekend:

 

Whenever the subject of Legos comes up, as it does more and more frequently in popular movie reviewing, I feel the need to mention that I never had Legos as a kid, or particularly wanted them. Nor have I played with them as an adult. Even so, I've enjoyed all of the Lego movies I've seen.

2017's The Lego Batman Movie was my favorite, an on-the-money spoof of torturous, "dark" superhero flicks. But 2014's original The Lego Movie was a charming, funny, unpretentious meditation on conformity versus individualism.

Now we get the sequel to that film, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, directed by Mike Mitchell from a script by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Matthew Fogel, and set, appropriately, five years after the events of The Lego Movie. The locale, once again, is the vast Lego metropolis of Bricksburg. The name has since been changed to "Apocalypseburg," however, after an invasion of cutesy but lethal aliens has reduced the town to dystopian wreckage. Even so, our hero Emmet (Chris Pratt) remains as upbeat and cheerful as ever.

When aliens abduct Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), Lego Batman (Will Arnett), and several of Emmet's other friends, taking them to the distant "Systar System," Emmet follows, intent on rescuing them. Along the way, he meets Rex (also Pratt), a tough guy space mercenary—with a crew of dinosaurs!—who helps him summon reserves of gritty resolve.

This is only the beginning of the plot's twists and turns. Like its predecessor, Lego Movie 2 is a dense and complex piece of storytelling. It's almost—though maybe not quite—as seamlessly thought through as the original, yet it flies along with effortless speed and precision.

As before, much of the comedy derives from the limited range of motion available to Lego figures, and there were gags that went over my head. I don't know why, for instance, sequences of numbers appear onscreen when the characters are building some new contraption, but I'm guessing this involves the technical side of Lego-building. There are also endless, and amusing, references to pop culture classics starting with Planet of the Apes and 2001 and carrying on through Jurassic Park and the Lord of the Rings movies up to the most topical industry gossip, and even a quick nod to RBG.

The voice cast also helps, from Pratt's openhearted sweetness as Emmet and his jaunty Kurt Russell-like swagger as Rex, to the tough but soulful heroine of Banks to Arnett's growl as Batman. Most hilarious here is Tiffany Haddish as Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi of the Systar System; her blossoming romance with Batman made me feel protective of both characters.

Check out my "Friday Flicks" column online at Phoenix Magazine, with reviews of What Men Want and The Isle, plus a preview of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival. Also, check out my review of the Broadway version of Disney's Aladdin, playing through February 17 at Gammage Auditorium.

RIP to brilliant, funny Albert Finney, passed on at 82.