Casper (1995)

Wonderful character development!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

As a child I loved the Casper comic books and televised cartoons and was anxious to take my daughter to this movie. It gave a new depth to the character by explaining who little Casper was before he died and how he died which no cartoon or comic book ever explained. This movie truly captured the spirit of what made us baby boomer kids love the character.

A paranormal expert and his daughter bunk in an abandoned house populated by 3 mischievous ghosts and one friendly one. Based upon the animated Casper Series starring Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci and it was released in 1995 now is Casper a bad movie? Absolutely no it's funny but it's mostly a movie about adventure and friendship between this girl Kat played by Ricci and Casper the friendly ghost now i remember watching the TV series that was based upon the film when i was younger and i always liked Casper not a crazy big fun but a pretty good character. What i loved the most about the film tho is the uncredited cameos by Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood and of course Dan Aykroyd who returns as Dr. Raymond Stantz in a small cameo. The film also had Steven Spielberg as an executive producer and late James Horner on the Soundtrack. Casper is an underrated film that is fun for both kids and their parents.

I found Casper to be quite entertaining. It's a great film for the entire family and a good one to watch around Halloween. The story is quite sad yet very funny and the special effects are superb. To summon up this film, I would say "young love at it's finest".This movie brings to my mind thoughts of "if I could talk to a loved one who is dead" and/or "if I could meet someone that is dead". The curiosity of meeting someone from another time period even if they are dead (a ghost) came to my mind while watching this film. Thoughts of talking to dead family members also weighed on my mind as the film progressed.8/10

I recall this film popping out of nowhere really, saw a trailer for it out of the blue, liked the look of it and went to see it. The creepy Addams Family visuals along with some really sweet looking effects hooked me and overall I really enjoyed this little kiddie flick.The plot is a simple Scooby Doo type affair really. There's a big old spooky mansion where Casper and his three uncle ghosts reside. An evil tyrannical female inherits the mansion and wants to find the treasure hidden within its bowels (then tear it down), problem is the ghosts. So she hires Bill Pullman (a paranormal therapist) and his daughter Ricci to get rid of the spooks.This being a kids flick its very predictable so I needn't tell you how things unfold. What I will say is the film is a highly enjoyable ghostie adventure with some really nice looking cobweb ridden sets, charming locations, quirky humour, acceptable performances and great CGI amazingly. The ghost effects on Casper are really nice and hold up well today. He's easily the best of the bunch visually, he looks quite realistic actually. The three naughty uncles are slightly more cartoonish looking and act so. The jokes and slapstick from them is very childish, you can see the one liners and sight gags coming a mile off but that's expected. Other ghosts that materialise during the film also look more like cartoons and not as effective as Casper, not too sure why Pullman's wife appears as a proper human though when all the others are CGI, emotional moment I guess.The other thing that impresses is how well the actors interact with the CGI spooks, believe it or not but they do look in all the right places and at the right times. You'd half expect this film to have hokey effects and badly directed live action but its really good all the way through. There are some unnecessary quickfire cameos that's for sure, the only clever one was seeing Dan Aykroyd turn up as 'Ray Stantz', I liked that.Hot on the heels of a certain Charles Addams creation Ricci follows on with her adopted kooky persona with this halloween caper, and its suits her perfectly. Pullman is a blundering but lovable father to Ricci's character whilst Casper is voiced nicely and acted well by a young Devon Sawa in human form. The only let down is the rather lame villainess and her henchman played by Eric Idle who didn't really need to be here.At times this film is actually very sweet and can bring a lump to your throat, it has that sickly sentimental touch, especially during the finale. But overall this is a great fun film if you enjoy light-hearted supernatural silliness. To sum up it isn't too far from a kids version of 'Beetlejuice' or 'High Spirits' and much better than the Eddie Murphy vehicle 'The Haunted Mansion'. 7/10