When Walt Disney died in 1966, he left his team of "Imagineers" in somewhat of a quandary. For years Walt had envisioned a haunted house attraction at his Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and he even built the mansion that was to house it. But the plans for what that mysterious Southern mansion was to contain were never made, and in the wake of Disney's departure, no one seemed to be able to decide on whether the Haunted Mansion should be scary or funny.

As everyone who has been to Disneyland or any of the other Disney theme parks since the original opened in California in 1969 knows, the Haunted Mansion is a compromise. While it's dark, creepy and filled with some startling effects, the Haunted Mansion isn't played for scares or straight laughs either. It's a sort of curious blend of both.

So it seems little coincidence that when Disney Pictures decided to make a film version of the popular theme park attraction, the movie would be exactly the same. Even though there are creepy sets, super CGI ghosts, wonderfully ghoulish Rick Baker zombies and all the elements present in other haunted house films such as "House on Haunted Hill" and "The Haunting", there aren't enough scares to classify "The Haunted Mansion" as a horror movie. And despite the presence of comedic actors such as Eddie Murphy, Wallace Shawn and Jennifer Tilly, it isn't an all out spoof like "Ghostbusters" or "Men in Black" either. As has been said before, it isn't exactly a scream in either sense.

But that doesn't mean the film isn't a lot of fun. It's sort of like a beautifully crafted walking tour through the worlds most popular attraction wrapped inside a story that mostly manages to stay out of the way.

The story follows the adventures of a workaholic Real Estate salesman named Jim Evers (Murphy). When his wife (Marsha Tomason) receives a call from the mysterious Gracey manor wanting a representative to list the property, Evers makes an unscheduled stop at the mansion along with his family, not realizing that Gracey (Nathaniel Parker), his sinister butler (Terrance Stamp) and everything and everyone else in the place is a ghost, and that what they really want is his wife, who they believe to be the reincarnation of Gracey's lost love. Of course, once the Evers arrives they can't leave because a freak storm has washed the bridge out (sounds sort of a familiar horror movie device, doesn't it?). So while Parker is wooing Tomason, Murphy gets trapped inside a secret passage and is forced to sample the delights of the Haunted Mansion before Madam Leota (Jennifer Tilly), who is nothing but a disembodied head inside a large crystal ball, tips him as to what is actually going on.

Somehow or another, Murphy manages to rise above the two-dimensional cardboard character he's been given to play and turn in a fairly likable performance as the work driven, non-believing Realtor. Likewise, Stamp is delightfully deadpan and much more annoyed than menacing as the evil ghostly butler. While both Thomason and Parker aren't much more than eye candy, Tilly literally chews every scene as Madam Leota.

But the real star of the production is the mansion itself, and it's from this that the film's delights emerge. As with the effects in the Disney theme park attractions, the ghosts in the Gracey mansion are neither deadly nor threatening (with the exception, of course, of the zombies designed by horror-movie veteran Rick Baker that Murphy has to face while retrieving a mysterious key deep in a crypt). All the other ghosts and effects are marginally creepy, but mostly either clever or amusing. David Berenbaum's script seems to have been written in such a way as to give the film's characters a plausible excuse to be in the mansion rather than to set up the tension for an actual story. Likewise, Rob Minkoff's direction seems aimed at achieving the same result one might get in a doombuggie gliding through the mansion; only to be dazzled by the effects without ever feeling frightened or threatened by a thing inside. And both have achieved exactly what they set up to do. Every aspect of the Haunted Mansion attraction is well represented in the film, from the breathing doors in the corridor to the singing busts in the graveyard outside. It truly is like experiencing the attraction sitting in a theater while only being mildly distracted by the paper-thin plot.

However, one cannot help but wonder how all this will be perceived by audiences that have never been to a Disney theme park and have never experienced the Haunted Mansion first hand. Unlike the other Disney film based on a popular theme park attraction, "Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl," this isn't an exciting tale of daring do filled with remarkable performances that's able to stand on it's own as an action adventure whether the audience has seen the attraction or not. "The Haunted Mansion" isn't really an exciting story at all, but rather, a retread of a lot of haunted house premises that never builds much tension, character identification or empathy, since there's never any real threat. And the production seems so dependant on the audience being pre-sold, that everyone else will likely figure out everything and wander away long before anything happens.

Nonetheless, "The Haunted Mansion" is an extremely interesting exercise at telling a story that doesn't actually have one and keeping it up for an hour and a half without having anyone walk out.