Disney's `Haunted Mansion' rides on the safe side.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Robert K. Elder

In an extraordinary display of chutzpah, the words "Welcome foolish mortals" open Walt Disney Pictures' "The Haunted Mansion" _ a movie based on Disneyland and Walt Disney World's classic theme park attractions. The foolish mortals, of course, would be those who pay $9 a ticket at the door.

On the heels of summer box office hit "Pirates of the Caribbean" (also based on a Disney ride), "The Haunted Mansion" is a family-friendly spookfest starring Eddie Murphy as a dedicated real estate agent trapped in a phantom-packed manor with his family.

Although "Haunted Mansion's" ghost story pales in comparison with its Caribbean sister, Disney deserves some recognition for encouraging multiethnicity in its classic and new properties ("Lilo & Stitch," "Mulan," etc.). In "Haunted Mansion," an interracial affair is the love that dare not speak its name _ quite a complex theme for an elaborate Disney advertisement.

In a classic "busy-dad-neglects-family" scenario, Jim Evers (Murphy) postpones a family outing so he and his wife/real estate partner, Sara (Marsha Thomason), can follow up on a sales call. Sara wants to handle it after the vacation, but Jim insists _ and they end up in a swampy countryside, welcomed to a cobweb-covered chateau by Ramsley (Terence Stamp), a cadaverous butler serving Master Gracey (Nathaniel Parker).

Opening credits flash over the prologue depicting a pair of deaths in the same mansion, so we already suspect the house's inhabitants aren't of the flesh-and-blood variety. Instead, an ancient curse fuels the Evers family's ghostly adventure, in a plot line swiped directly from the pages of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Sara, the spitting image of Gracey's departed love Elizabeth, may be the key to lifting the curse.

Director Rob Minkoff ("The Lion King," ...