Casper

There is a penchant in Hollywood to take children’s entertainment properties and make feature films out of them. There’s nothing wrong with this on paper. After all, marketing an old property to a new audience is how you build generations of fans who may not gravitate towards an older show with its outdated animation and sensibilities. Where problems pop up is when an unskillful writer tries to write a script that will appeal both to the young ones as well as the parents saddled with taking their kids to these films. A property like Casper should already have an adult fan base, adults who grew up watching the cartoons on Saturday Mornings alongside the likes of Richie Rich and Scooby-Doo. A smart script will aim for that audience, sprinkling in nostalgia along with the juvenile humor. A bad script, on the other hand, will try to appease the older crowd with mature humor, profanity, sexual content and, especially in this case, a topic that the average child shouldn’t be considering just yet, the death of a young child.

You would think that a show about ghosts would be, by its very nature, dealing with death, but, quite frankly, the fact that Casper was a ghost in the cartoons wasn’t really tied into how he got that way. He just is. The original show knew that young children didn’t care who he was when he was alive and how he died. It didn’t matter to the character any more than how Richie Rich got all his wealth. So in 1995 along comes Casper the movie, filled with state-of-the-art animation, over-the-top villains, and the tragic death story of a little boy. 

Casper starts out promising. The initial premise is what you would expect from a big budget film about this character. A greedy woman, Carrigan (Cathy Moriarty) inherits a run down mansion only to discover it may have a hidden treasure buried within. However the house is haunted by a malevolent trio: Stretch, Fatso and Stinky as well as their benevolent, but picked on fellow ghost, Casper. After several failed attempts to remove the ghosts, Carrigan hires Dr. Harvey (Bill Pullman), a self-proclaimed therapist for the dead, to come and help these pesky ghosts resolve whatever issues they have that are keeping them from moving on to heaven. The doctor has a secret, though. His wife has recently died, something that has lead to his fascination with the afterlife, and he’s secretly hoping his paranormal research will lead to a connection with her spirit. Dr. Harvey and his daughter Kat (Christina Ricci), move in to the haunted mansion and, as expected, chaos ensues. 

The first half-hour of this film hits all the right notes. We get introduced to the scenery chewing villainess, as well as her bumbling sidekick, Dibs (Eric Idle). There are several cameos that pop up, here, too, but unless the kids in the audience are very well versed in the actors and comedians of their parent’s generation, these will go right over their heads. We get brief moments with Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello from Saturday Night Live), Dan Aykroyd reprising his Ghostbuster character Ray Stantz, Clint Eastwood, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Gibson, and even The Cryptkeeper from HBO’s Tales From The Crypt. These range from mildly amusing to head-scratching with nothing in-between. Once the doctor arrives, however, things start to go off the rails and they never quite right the carts afterwards.

For a children’s property this film is way too preoccupied with death. We get it that Casper is a ghost and therefore must have been alive once but this film wants to dwell on this aspect a little too much. We get treated to whole scenes of Casper reminiscing about playing ball with his father and how dying affected him and drove him crazy attempting to build a machine to bring the dead back to life. Cheerful stuff for a kids film, right? Then there’s the three other ghosts. At first they come across as cheerily menacing tricksters. But there is something darker beneath that façade. They bully Casper constantly, beating on him and running him down. Then, at one point midway through the film, they prank Dr. Harvey by convincing him they can get in touch with his deceased wife only to turn the tables by having one of themselves in drag pretending to be her as a gag. It’s unfunny and mean-spirited.

The highlight of the film is the relationship between Kat and Casper. At first Kat is frightened by the ghost but it doesn’t take long for him to win her over. These scenes are sweet and help ease the film over its rougher patches. Alas, these scenes also lead into discussions about death, dying, and Casper’s inability to remember at first who he used to be. They’re also interspersed between scenes of Kat getting bullied in school, Dr. Harvey battling it out with Stretch, Fatso and Stinky. And not-to-be-forgotten is Carrigan and Dibs who disappear for a while only to show up again only to try to kill each other. The resolution to this storyline is lazy and abrupt. 

This should have been lighter fare, a tale of a young girl whose personal struggles are lightened by the unlikely friendship of Casper the friendly ghost. Instead it’s a dismal story filled with bullies, both living and dead, depression, and death. It’s a film that doesn’t know which audience it needs to target and thus misses both targets. It was marketed for children but has plenty of harsh language and disturbing plot points that will turn off many parents from letting their young ones watch it and those old enough to enjoy that kind of humor will be too old to want to watch this kind of cartoon brought to life. It misses the mark so often that the few times it does work only enhances the frustration in what it could have been. This film could have worked had the filmmakers picked their target audience and aimed squarely there.

Release Date: May 26, 1995

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rated PG

Starring: Bill Pullman, Christina Ricci, Cathy Moriarty and Eric Idol

Directed By: Brad Silberling