If you need to kill ninety minutes with harmless seasonal movie fare, _The Haunted Mansion_ fits the bill. It doesn’t overachieve, but it also doesn’t insult. After all, this is a Disney Halloween feature starring Eddie Murphy, more than a decade after he flamed out as a hip leading man, so set your expectations accordingly. Escorting two kids and a little-too-young wife into a cobwebby old estate, he encounters ghosts, opens trap doors and takes advice from a crystal ball. He shrieks, he runs, he gets mixed up in an old dispute between resident phantoms. Nothing to light anybody’s world on fire, but at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome or stretch to make room for any force-fed sequels.

I can picture the idea men sitting around their conference room table now. “Well, _Pirates of the Caribbean_ did pretty well for us... what other rides have been kicking around the park for a while?” I don’t think anyone was fooling themselves into thinking Murphy would suddenly deliver a transcendent performance to match Johnny Depp’s here. They cast him, and paid him, to show up, act a little childish and look/sound like Eddie Murphy, which he does. Looking for something more than that? Look elsewhere.