Review of Casper (1995) by Steven P — 01 Oct 2010

In the early 1940s, Harvey Cartoons created Casper, a ghost that doesn't want to spook the living, but would rather befriend them. It was a good way to show that if there are ghosts out there, they might night be all that scary.

Fifty-five years later, Brad Silberling made this really crappy movie with Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci's underdeveloped voice.

I admit I haven't seen this film in years; but does an automobile critic have to drive a Pacer every day before he admits that he doesn't like the way it handles?

It was awkward enough when I was in middle school (then, I was gawking at Lara Croft's tight buns and the surprisingly short-skirted for ten body of May from Pokemon), but there was no way I was going to watch all 96 minutes of this again in college. So, I decided to watch the Nostalgia Critic riff on it instead.

Damn it, he was as right as I was! Even though the effects are impressive (Casper was the first CGI main character in movies, predating Toy Story by mere weeks), they were wasted on nonsensical things like ghost farts. On top of that, while the cartoons featured Casper as a childlike specter, the movie rendered him as an unnecessary romantic; maybe even bordering on pedophilia.

Furthermore, even though the movie makes an effort to be meaningful, it commits the common family movie mistake of relying too much on fifteen-second celebrity cameos and cutaway cultural references that would be more entertaining on a given episode of Family Guy.

Between Ghostbusters, Danny Phantom, Ghost, and pretty much anything else with ghosts, there are far better uses of ephemeral phantasms in movies and TV. Casper gets a 45 out of 100.