In the past I covered a PC game that tied in to a Casper movie I never heard of, and I'm waiting until the Christmas season to tackle another Casper movie (refer to the list on my sidebar for more info on that), so for now, I want to tackle a film that I've seen years ago and sat on reviewing.
History
I've said this countless times before, but when you get right down to it, Cartoon Network became little more than a dumping ground in the mid to late 2000s. You already know that through shows like Pet Alien, half-assed originals at the time like Squirrel Boy, and for some reason, the network became a home for various CGI movies. Cartoon Network aired both Scary Godmother movies on an almost annual basis, they aired that Tony Hawk movie that RebelTaxi talked about and I think they also aired some Hot Wheels project that slipped from my and everyone's consciousness. And to get the obvious out of the way, along with that other Casper movie I mentioned, this is where the following aired, and how I ultimately got to know it.
Onto Casper, Casper is a classic cartoon character that was essentially dead on arrival. Caddicarus summed up the character better than I could ever hope to, but I'll try my best to give my take, while borrowing a bit from the better reviewer. Casper the Friendly Ghost sums up the very character Casper is, a ghost with a dementedly friendly demeanor who exists solely to break the stereotypes associated with ghosts, well, at the cost of any potential characterization. The character had gone through every phase of forced marketing, dabbling with the likes of Hanna Barbera for numerous show attempts and that's just talking television. Don't get me started on the video games. I won't talk about the 1995 movie because trust me, it's not that bad, but from there it was more of the same, and it only got worse.
It went from a half-budget version of the 1995 film, with the added luxury of it being a family film, to a crummy CGI Christmas film, and that's just what I've seen. For all I know there could be more I'm missing, but the most recent adaptation of Casper I've seen growing up was this movie. I didn't think much of it, like any show I've seen growing up, but apparently it was successful enough to get its own TV show, which I not only never saw, but never even heard of. Sorta glad about that because I don't intend to cover any more Casper movies until that Christmas one.
The movie was produced by Moonscoop, and hearing that name alone, it makes perfect sense how this came to fruition. They're on a whole other spectrum of dated CGI compared to the likes of Mainframe Entertainment, but I'll get to that when I could.
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| Spoiler |
The film has a surprisingly decent roster of actors. The special stars Ned Bigby himself, Devon Werkheiser, plus we get Bob Saget voicing one of the characters, as well as the voice of Kim Possible and Ren Stevens of Even Stevens, and unfortunately that covers the only interesting casting choices, I mean of course we'd get the likes of Candi Milo, Nike Futterman, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Michael Richardson, Fred Tatasciore, Billy West, Debbi Derryberry, you're all capable, yes, but you're all too familiar, too easily identifiable. Only other interesting actor I guess is Dan Castellaneta, and that's really only because it's a role outside of The Simpsons. Glad he hasn't gone the route of Karl Wiedergott.
One last thing before I finally get into the movie, this movie was directed by Mark Gravas, an Australian animator who you may recognize for the Nickelodeon cartoon Yakkity Yak. I have nothing against the show, but I wouldn't hold it to as high of a standard as others (though I would gladly take it over the last few shows I talked about). He also did CJ the DJ, which, if you could find, is a more interesting watch.
Premise
The film keeps with the very essence of Casper, in that Casper is far too friendly for his own good. After missing a scare route with his three uncles Stinky, Stretch and Fatso, while also getting caught off guard and scared by the obligatory human friend, Casper is forced to go to Scare School to straighten up and fly right. Nothing leading up to this was important enough to mention, this is an example of a film that tries to stretch beyond its means to cope with a lack of substance. On the upside, Casper's relationship with his uncles is seemingly better than it is in previous installments, or at least it's displayed better.
Upon getting there, he manages to make some friends, and like many shows before and after this, it's two friends for the obligatory trio. These typically feature the eccentric dude, the tough female and the lead encompassing the voice of reason. Where have I seen this before?
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| There's one |
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| There's another |
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| And another |
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| Well they're interchangeable. |
Point is, it's been done, can't say they're above any others, some pairings work better than others, some can act out better, and obviously I'm harping on Casper here for personal consistency. Another obvious, Casper's friends fall in line to the first two pictures above. Casper's friends are Ra, a streetwise mummy who's for all intents and purposes, a wigger. There's also Mantha, a zombie who falls under the tough sarcastic girl who's the most subjectively likable of the three by default.
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| And here they are for reference. |
When Casper boards the school pirate ship, seriously, he's almost immediately outed. I guess they could smell fear. Casper meets Thatch, a vampire kid who immediately establishes what archetype he belongs to in a self-introduction on par with Quinn from Norm of the North 2. At school, things don't fare better for Casper, where due to his friendly nature and hidden apathy, he's faced with three consecutive detentions.
I'm just gonna give a quick warning, I may be jumping around a bit. It takes a while to get to the essential plot points in this film, the rest is padded out with long establishing shots and attempts at comedic dialogue.
Casper decides to sack up in an attempt to pass school, while evading Thatch who monitors him, but after a telltale letter surfaces, Casper is forced to scare his human friend to avoid banishment to the oh-so originally named Valley of the Shadows. At this point, I got to thinking, Casper would've worked better as a one-time deal. Think about it, if Casper was conditioned to be scary, there'd be an interesting premise to be had. Casper would learn that he doesn't need to be scary twenty-four-seven and the dilemma would make a bit more sense. Here, he's just fighting to be his bland friendly self. Lame.
But back to the story, Casper's 180 on his human friend hits him to the point he banishes himself to the Valley, where after an interesting encounter with his more malicious side, it's thrown away to a friendly paradise. This does serve a purpose though, for Casper is reunited with a long gone relative, and the aunt/uncle (Ankle for they're two headed), of the red herring antagonists Alder and Dash. If you don't know, the latter are the headmasters of the school who were driven to hate the friendly ones after Ankle was banished to the Valley by resident Casper antagonist Kibosh.
Basically, Alder and Dash's prime contribution to the plot is that they want to get rid of Kibosh so they could get out of working at the school, and they made a potion that turns things to stone; Casper's lead into this is that he'd be a test subject, though his uncles wind up being around for it. The two wind up succeeding and seek to scare the entire world, and I've held off on this plot point long enough. Throughout the film, we get statements regarding "the balance", which demonizes overly friendly monsters and views overly-scary monsters as problematic. This, in hindsight, holds up in the plot, but for a summary, that's really just a brief plot point to bring up.
We're almost home, the students travel to the human world, turning everyone to stone, and it takes a confrontation from Ankle to Alder and Dash to remind them of their former priorities. In the long run there's no major climax and everything is resolved through some so-so comedy. Like many movies of this style, all ends happily, and no they never reveal how they turned everyone back from stone, that's off-screen.
Animation
As mentioned far ago, Moonscoop was behind this special. If the first image I posted in this review wasn't a tell, the animation is kinda iffy. Everything looks cartoony (which isn't a strike against it, just an observation), and ill-detailed. Environments are flat looking, they really kicked back on the ghosts, where they look more solid than they need to be, plus there's something seriously up with the hair (it's all solid, never moving.) To show you the power of the lack of detail:
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| And the outside is completely barren. |
Basically, it makes the plot more lively.
Overall
I would say this is yet another so mediocre it sucks tier movie, but then I'd have to levy that complaint to every other Casper movie/show/whatever, and admittedly, it did the character some justice. The characters are well realized and they aren't doing shit for the hell of it, Casper is okay in this, even though he relapsed into the "ever endearing" always nice schtick, the animation makes everything else look good, and Mantha has more to her than Olympia in Norm of the North, and I only make that connection because Moonscoop did that film (as Splash Entertainment)
I guess this movie worked at the time, after all it got a TV show with which the one strike against it is that it replaced the Mr. Men Show, and three video games. Yeah, three video games, by a shit publisher and their roster of shit developers. The former, maybe, the latter, I hope Tennings covers them after a year or so.
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