Casper

Like The Flintstones and The Addams Family, Casper is an attempt to bring cartoons to life while incorporating them with real actors and sets. As a technical achievement, it's impressive, and entertaining. Read full review

A better- than-average children's film, dolled up with some high-priced art direction and extraordinary special effects. Read full review

Casper is more an elaborate mechanism than a fully realized movie, and the silly plot is merely an excuse to indulge the amazing special effects. But first-time director Brad Silberling never lets the magic overwhelm his characters. Best known as Wednesday in the Addams family movies, Ricci has grown into an appealing young star who nicely complements Pullman's trademark sensitivity, and together they add the necessary touch of special to the visual effects. [26 May 1995, p.G3]

The film is an epic treatment of a childhood curio. It's also the kind of elaborate movie stunt you can't imagine someone really pulling off. [26 May 1995, p.C]

Casper often resembles a blueprint for the next Universal theme park ride, but it serves well as the summer's first family treat. This movie should make children happy, at least for another month, until Disney unleashes its Pocahontas punch. [26 May 1995, p.10]

Ricci makes all this far more palatable than it should be. She is surely helped by the dismal level shared by most allegedly more adult afterlife fantasies. The kids will enjoy the high-spirited antics, but Casper ultimately is another reason to wish Hollywood would declare a moratorium on ghost writing. [26 May 1995, p.03]

The father-daughter chemistry between Pullman and Ricci seems good. And the ghosts - who look sort of like the result of 24 double exposures a second - are engaging, courtesy of the computer and animation wizards at Industrial Light and Magic. [26 May 1995, p.7C]

Casper is not the kind of smartly written movie that works on children's and adult levels at once. But with its lively pace, smashing visual tricks and one of the cutest heroes on screen, it is an engaging fantasy for very small children. Read full review

Let's face it, it's about a dead boy who falls in love with a real live girl. The high-tech animation is completely persuasive; nothing else is. Read full review

It's aimed squarely at the tinies, but there is charm enough here to make it bearable for adults too. Read full review

An intimate and likeable picture. As a part-animated live-action movie, it harks back to less frenetic kids' fare from the '60s like Bedknobs and Broomsticks, rather than, say, the 'toon-laden Roger Rabbit. Read full review

What’s depressing about the current Hollywood mania to literalize old cartoon series isn’t that a show like Casper is such bad source material. It’s that the movie version is like the cartoon without innocence — a fairy tale with the soul of a rerun. Read full review

Another demonstration of the hazards involved turning a six-minute animated short into a big budget movie, Casper will doubtless spur nostalgic recognition among grown-ups but skews so heavily toward children that it offers little to divert anyone over the age of 8. Read full review

Although most of the stars of this movie are real, live actors, Casper is mostly just a big cartoon in which those live actors must interact with some devilishly clever spectral animation. Read full review

The techno-wizards at Industrial Light & Magic really knock themselves out here, but Casper is more serviceable than magical. [26 May 1995, p.85]

At its best, which is when it's exploiting both its eye-popping special effects and delicious production design (the interior of the haunted mansion is truly awe-inspiring), Casper proves itself to be passable, if mindless, kiddie fare. At its worst, Casper continually resorts to desperate star cameos to get a rise out of the audience, lame and phony heart-tugging to get them emotionally involved (and there is more of this nonsense than you might expect), and ridiculous, coincidental plotting to make sure this thing runs at least 90 minutes. Read full review

It's not clear why Steven Spielberg's Amblin decided to make a live-action entertainment starring the least interesting and most saccharine of all 50s cartoon characters, the friendly ghost who can't help scaring people, but here's your chance to search for an answer. Read full review

There are a few sight gags that might amuse the kids, but for the most part, the computer-generated effects are highly disappointing. Read full review

Brad Silberling, a TV director (Brooklyn Bridge, NYPD Blue) making his feature debut, obviously is out of his element in this grandiose extravaganza of sets and effects. Still, that doesn't explain the inert performances of Moriarty and her henchman, Eric Idle, and sundry other supporting characters. Much of the blame belongs to Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver and the many ghost writers who created this ghoulish hash of teen romance, father-and-child reunion and monster mash. Read full review

Director Brad Silberling and screenwriters Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver can't figure out how to play a lot of this material. They pour on the sentiment and then they pour on the dopiness. The ghosts in this movie aren't the only ones who lack resolution. So do the filmmakers. Read full review

There are theme park attractions with stronger plots and more compelling characters. [26 May 1995, p.17]

The movie is pallid, bloated and light enough to evaporate from the mind 10 minutes after you leave the theatre. [26 May 1995]