A Ghost Is on the Loose at the Plaza Hotel in Eloise's Rawther Unusual Halloween

The Plaza Hotel is the stately building at the heart of the Eloise series of picture books and the movies and specials that have followed from them. It’s an elegant structure whose abundance of rooms and passages would make it a potentially very spooky location on Halloween. The animated special Eloise’s Rawther Unusual Halloween turns the Plaza into a genuine haunted house for the occasion.

Eloise (Mary Matilyn Mouser) is the energetic six-year-old who lives with her nanny (Lynn Redgrave) at the hotel. She pretty much has free run of the place, though she irritates certain guests and staff, particularly the persnickety Mr. Salamone (Tim Curry), whose job it is to make sure everything at the hotel operates smoothly. In this 45-minute-long tale directed by Wesley Archer, he is especially stressed out because the man who intends to buy the Plaza Hotel is staying for a couple of days. Naturally, he meets Eloise almost immediately, and they don’t exactly hit it off. Could this one little girl ruin his plans for the hotel?

Eloise, meanwhile, has other things on her mind. Ever since her nanny told her a creepy story about Diamond Jim Johnson (Brad Garrett), the prominent citizen who died en route to the Plaza Hotel’s grand opening and who allegedly returns each year “with a hunger that can never be satisfied,” the little girl has been obsessed. At first the story startles her. Then, after she is sure that she sees Diamond Jim for herself, fear gives way to indignation. No one believes her, and when strange things begin to happen in the hotel, they blame her. Will tracking down this ghost and giving him a piece of her mind put an end to all the shenanigans?

Mouser does a fine job of capturing Eloise’s boundless energy, and Redgrave brings just the right mix of warmth and easy-going authority to the one person who can keep a rein on Eloise’s mania. Curry, who played a similar live-action role in Home Alone 2, is excellent as always, and Garrett, who never fails to crack me up on Everybody Loves Raymond, sounds robust with a splash of melancholy as the ghost whose presence stirs up all the trouble. The rest of the voice work is great as well, but these four are the stand-outs.

The animation is modeled after the illustrations by Hilary Knight. I love the stylized credits, but the rest of the movie is great as well. There’s a certain simplicity to the animation style that fits the movie’s picture book heritage. The depiction of the ghost, with his bluish-black tint and translucent quality, is especially interesting. Aside from him, there’s a lot of pink in the color scheme, since that is Eloise’s favorite color. This special also involves two of her best friends, both of whom are very feminine, so I’m not sure this special would appeal to most boys very much, though they might well enjoy it if they gave it a chance. There’s certainly a lot of mild mayhem to keep the plot moving.

I’m always on the lookout for Halloween movies that are primarily cute rather than scary. Eloise’s Rawther Unusual Halloween, released just this year, definitely fits the bill as a short but sweet bit of ghostly fun.