Live-Action Adaptation of Casper the Friendly Ghost from The Nineties. Directed by Brad Silberling (who went on to do the A Series of Unfortunate Events film) and produced by (who else?) Steven Spielberg. The first feature film ever to have a CGI character in the lead role, beating Toy Story by six months.Rich Bitch Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty) is eager to get her claws on her dear departed dad's fortune, but discovers at the reading of his Will that he... didn't like her very much and only left her a spooky mansion. After finding that the house may contain treasure, she drags her Battle Butler Dibbs (Eric Idle) to the Maine coastline, where they find the building is haunted by Casper and his three uncles. Carrigan eventually hires "ghost therapist" Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman) to get rid of them. He brings along his daughter Kat (a teenage Christina Ricci fresh off The Addams Family films), whose relationship with Casper is most of the movie.The movie didn't do well with the critics (Roger Ebert being a notable exception), but nevertheless gained a bit of a cult following.The DTV sequels, on the other hand, were far more commonly agreed to be much lower quality, both in terms of effects and plot, probably because they had absolutely nothing to do with the original movie except for the titular ghost.
An Aesop: About friendship, with a good example (Casper and Kat), and a dysfunctional example (Carrigan and Dibbs) and a creepy example (the Ghostly Trio and Dr Harvey).
Battle Butler: Eric Idle's character Dibbs. It's never explained what his relationship to Carrigan is or why he follows her around and takes her abuse.
Black Comedy: The Ghostly Trio warms up to James so much that they decide they want to kill him so he'll become a ghost and hang out with them for eternity. But they change their minds.
California Doubling: Friendship, Maine, the setting of the film, is a real place, but none of the movie was shot there. The downtown scenes were filmed in the more touristy Rockport, Maine while most of the movie, including all the scenes involving Whipstaff, were filmed in California.
Dawson Casting: Averted; all of the teenagers are played by actors between the ages of 13 and 15 and Casper's voice actor is 14 with the actor portraying his briefly restored body just about pushing it at 17.
Even Evil Has Standards: Right after the Ghostly Trio decide they want to kill James so his ghost can join their gang, James (drunkenly) tells them he won't help Carrigan evict them from the manor, and declares them to be his best friends. They declare they just can't croak him right in front of him.
Fly At The Camera Ending: The movie ends with Casper flying up to the camera, winking, spelling out "The End", then the friendly ghost apparently trying to devour the audience.
There's also a surprisingly funny one in one of the sequels. The school principal runs out of the bathroom, pants still down, after being scared by Casper. He runs up to a woman staff member, grabs her and says "I need you!". She looks down at his boxers, screams, and slaps the principal across the face.
Ghostly Chill: "Casper, close the window, it's cold."
Glamour Failure: Ghosts don't have reflections. Kat dryly comments this is one reason she's not dating Casper. ILM probably considered it a way to save money on the CGI.
Probably not just that; it's a pretty common belief that ghosts don't have reflections anyway.
Karma Houdini: Vic and Amber get scared out of the party, before they could play their prank, by the Ghostly Trio. However, Kat looks on in confusion and praised by her guests, and without a date, until Casper shows up briefly alive.
Logo Joke: The Universal globe turns into the moon.
Money, Dear Boy: The only explanation for the celebrity cameos. Or the long-term presence of Eric Idle.
Mythology Gag: Kat and her father's surname is Harvey. Casper the Friendly Ghost was originally published by Harvey Comics, which was defunct by the time this film was made.
Take That: Quite a few, considering it was written by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver, two veterans of the Warner Bros. Animation Silver Age. Jabs at Oprah, Mark Wahlberg, and the like are commonplace.
Terrible Trio: The Ghostly Trio. Although they're astonishingly competant for secondary antagonists - though they have had over 100 years to perfect the art.
Who You Gonna Call?: To exorcise the house? Ultimately, Dr. Harvey, but Carrigan tries a few other professionals first. One of the trope namers even drops by to give a lampshade.
Mainly, the problem is that darn Duke Snider autographed baseball. Duke Snider began his baseball career in the 1940s, but everything else in the film, particularly the art direction, suggests Casper lived sometime around 1900. To add to the confusion, a direct-to-video "prequel" portrayed him becoming a ghost in The Present Day.
The only possible explanation for the "prequel" is that after his father passed away, he was taken to the train. During the trip, time moves faster. After falling off the train, all the shorts and specials happen. Then he wanders to the town where he meets the boy Chris. Casper did say to Kat that he "didn't go where" he "was supposed to go", and he didn't.
0 reviews