‘Haunted Mansion’ review: Dead on arrival

If you’re a fan of The Haunted Mansion, Disney’s kitschy-gothy theme-park ride, you might be looking forward to the studio’s big-screen adaptation. “Haunted Mansion” arrives with a hip young director, an eclectic cast and a mission to bring a little color to a genre that usually hinges on dead Anglo-Saxon aristocrats. What’s not to love?

Beware, foolish mortals: “Haunted Mansion” can’t hold a floating candelabra to the original ride, or even the widely panned film version from 2003. That movie, you may remember, already scored a few points for diversity by casting Eddie Murphy as a real estate broker. This reboot isn’t a radical departure or an ambitious reinvention. It just adds a sloppy new coat of paint to an existing intellectual property.

LaKeith Stanfield plays Ben, a New Orleans widower and tour guide with a bleak outlook. “Life is dirt,” he barks as he leads visitors through his famously haunted city. When a single mother, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), and her shy 9-year-old, Travis (Chase W. Dillon), move into a ghost-plagued pile called Gracey Manor, they seek help from Ben, who happens to be a former astrophysicist and the inventor of a specter-detecting camera.

Would you believe the screenwriter is Katie Dippold, of “Ghostbusters?” She comes up with a mixed bag of characters here, including Father Kent (a laid-back Owen Wilson), the French Quarter psychic Harriet (an uneven Tiffany Haddish) and Tulane University professor Bruce Davis (an excitable Danny DeVito). The movie’s attempts to reverse-engineer the ride into a narrative feel even less inspired: Jamie Lee Curtis squeezes herself into the role of Madame Leota — the…