Movie review: Casper

Originally published June 23, 1995, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1127

It must be getting fairly frustrating for Marvel. With its sole big screen release being the much-maligned Howard the Duck, it seems that everyone else is able to turn their characters (Superman, Batman, TimeCop, the Rocketeer, the Mask, the Crow, Swamp Thing, Tank Girl) into big screen stories with far greater ease and frequency. The results, both critical and financial, have been mixed—but that’s going to happen with any genre.

Now another company can be added to the roster of those who have beaten Marvel to the punch, when it comes to producing a successful screen translation of one of its characters: Harvey Comics, with the advent of Casper.

And I’ll tell you: The film is, for my money, one of the best comic book adaptations, bar none.

Why? Because, ironically, the titular character has no blood, no musculature, no bones—indeed, he’s the incarnation of one thing that the movie genuinely has: soul.

And a heart. Casper is not a pint-sized version of Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters or any other broadly played ghost farces, despite its comic book origins and the presence of The Ghostly Trio. Rather, writers Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver (whose previous work includes marvelous stints on Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, although Oliver did create Chicken-Boo, for which she will not soon be forgiven) have opted to go the genuine Ghost route, subbing The Addams Family‘s Christina Ricci for Demi Moore and Casper (effectively voiced by Malachi Pearson) for Patrick Swayze. (And, for my money, Casper’s a better dancer.)

As a result, Casper is sometimes light on humor, soft on villainy (Cathy Moriarty and Eric Idle, hard-working but wasted in roles that one solid rewrite could have eliminated altogether) but long on—longing.

Whereas Casper in the cartoons was a whiny shlepper, and Casper in the comics was good for a few pages of gags but paled (sorry) beside the far more interesting Spooky, Wendy the Good Little Witch, et al, the live-action Casper is wistful, funny, eager to please, and wears his emotions on the surface because he hasn’t got anyplace else to hide them.

When Casper brushes his “lips” against would-be girlfriend Kat’s (Ricci’s) face as she is about to fall asleep for the night, she sleepily asks him to close the window because she feels a chill. His sadness at his limited and negative physical interaction is palpable.

Director Brad Silberling gets excellent performances out of his actors—a considerable achievement when one considers that Ricci and Bill Pullman (as her psychiatrist dad, Dr. James [nudge nudge, wink wink, get this] Harvey) spend many scenes acting to empty air. And James Horner’s score is (sorry again) haunting.

There are some mildly annoying plot holes (the electricity in the haunted house not being turned on until the Harveys arrive, yet earlier on Casper is watching television; the concept of ghosts being ghosts because they have “unfinished business” being unevenly applied: that sort of thing). But compared to the great gaping holes in, say, the Batman movies, it’s nothing I couldn’t live with.

And the story has the nerve to address what has always been the underlying thing-no-one-discusses: Casper is a dead child. Gotta be. Last time I checked, ghosts come from dead people, and Casper by his design and attitude is clearly a child—a deceased kid.

The only time I saw the concept dealt with before was an issue of Marvel’s now defunct Crazy magazine. The movie isn’t as morbid as that issue’s “Casper the Dead Baby,” thank God, and there were scenes in Casper that genuinely got me misty-eyed—not just me, in fact; my family, as well.

For Casper is that comic book rarity, a family film. So much so, in fact, that I decided to have a family member step in and give her view on Casper: past contributor to But I Digress, Shana David (age 14 these days, for people who are keeping track):

Every once in a while, a movie will come out that sounds like such a complete waste of film that I don’t want to bother to see it. This, I thought, would be the case with the new movie Casper, based on the cartoon about a friendly ghost. I figured it would be scene after scene of slapstick comedy that supposedly had a main theme and a plot.

Despite these apprehensions, I went to the sneak preview accompanied by my father, two sisters, and the four glow-in-the-dark Casper puppets from Pizza Hut that we had purchased earlier in the day. I expected to be underwhelmed. I was surprised to see a touching film that did have a plot. And an excellent one, at that.

The movie centered around a young girl (Christina Ricci) and her ghost psychologist father (Bill Pullman) who are asked to move into an old haunted house to help rid it of ghosts. Ricci’s character is scared at first, when she meets Casper and has to spend a good portion of the movie getting to know him (this part sort of drags). The rest of the movie is about their adventures in trying to save the house and so forth. It sounds like the sort of thing that would be predictable and boring, but it wasn’t. The combination of excellent acting, writing, and direction made it all unique and interesting.

One thing that I liked in particular was that the movie wasn’t afraid to face truths—like that Casper is, in fact, a dead child: depressing but true. Also explaining what exactly happened to Casper, along with his feelings about other people, was an excellent idea.

Somehow, in my sick, twisted mind, I managed to relate the Casper movie to The Who’s Tommy (which I recently saw performed on Broadway). Now, there are the obvious similarities, but I saw more. As follows:

Both Tommy and Casper live in a world where they are ignored and almost feared by the people around them. Tommy is ignored and feared because he doesn’t speak—Casper because he isn’t alive. Tommy spends countless amounts of time looking at his reflection in the mirror, trying to find out who he is, while the people around him haunt him by asking, “Tommy can you hear me?” He really is saying what he wants (“See me, feel me, touch me, heal me”), but it’s the “regular” people who can’t hear him. Casper looks at the reflection of what he is trying to find (life) by looking at people who are living. They run screaming because they think that he is haunting them for no reason, but if they listened they would realize that what he wants is friend (“Can I keep you?”)

The Acid Queen asks Tommy to join her, because she is also a person who can’t be heard. He refuses because he is considered too good. Casper’s uncles want Casper to join them, but Casper is too good and friendly for that, too.

If you had never seen Tommy or never knew exactly what it was about before, you will have to see it because it is an excellent play. The movie Tommy isn’t so hot, but it serves its purpose.

You know, I’m getting to be more and more like my father every day. I start off talking about something and, before I’m done, I stray completely from the topic.

Speaking of straying from the topic, everyone in the world who is even slightly sick of our favorite football player should read O.J.’s Legal Pad. It is hilarious—completely fabricated, but hilarious nevertheless. My personal favorite is when a panic stricken OJ writes a note saying “Johnnie, quick! In front of the jury, did I limp on my left leg or my right?

I know my dad is going to be furious because I only wrote a few paragraphs reviewing Casper and about a page talking about other stuff. Oh well. But I digress.

(Shana David, eldest daughter of Peter David, writer of stuff, finds it amusing that her local movie theater paired the Casper sneak preview with Village of the Ðámņëd. Tee hee.)

Everyone’s always trying to steal my style. Hmmf.

In any event, Shana may have put her finger on what makes Casper so effective as a character in this film. How often have teenagers felt disaffected, even invisible, only wanting a friend, and wishing they could be liked for the type of person they are?

That pretty much covers Casper. Kat Harvey can only like Casper for his personality, because there’s no body to go with it. And there’s the ominous truth of Casper’s deceased status. With violence in schools and death a possible consequence of sexual activity, mortality is much more in-your-face than it was when we were kids. Casper is life-affirming. Nowadays, particularly in comics-related material, that’s a breath of fresh air—from someone who can’t even draw a breath.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Yeah, the Village of the Ðámņëd tie-in was amusing. So is the marquee at a local multiplex which features, on one line: Die Hard Casper.)