CASPER: A SPIRITED BEGINNING (1997), CASPER'S HAUNTED CHRISTMAS (2000), CASPER'S SCARE SCHOOL (2006)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2,3) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

Despite the substantial box office of the 1995 CASPER in its theatrical release, the next two live-action iterations of the franchise were both DTV films, of which the first, CASPER: A SPIRITED BEGINNING, was the most formulaic.

SPIRITED is a prequel which purports to tell how Casper ended up living with his non-uncles The Ghostly Trio. The story ignores the details of his origin from the 1995 movie and just starts with Casper boarding the "Ghost Train" to go to some training center for unquiet spirits. He ends up in a human town, where he does his friendly ghost thing and gets rebuffed by fearful humans. In the same town, the Ghostly Trio have taken up residence in a condemned mansion, Applegate Mansion (no relation to the house seen in CASPER). Local real estate entrepreneur Tim Carson (Sreve Guttenberg) is seeking to have the mansion razed over the protests of townies who want to keep their heritage. One of the opponents is schoolteacher Shiela (Lori Loughlin), who has "romantic interest" written all over her, and another is Tim's own son Chris. In fact, after the Ghostly Trio drive away both the townies and Tim's construction workers, weirdness-loving Chris tries to ingratiate himself with the three specters, but to no avail. 

Casper is pursued by Kibosh (James Earl Jones), a training-ghost who resents the escape of one of his charges. As it happens, Kibosh is also looking for the Trio, who aren't doing their fair share of scaring. Kibosh has little effect until film's end, for most of the movie is taken up with Chris's problems with bullies and his negligent father. Chris is of course that rare individual willing to become friends with an undead shade, and so the Friendly Ghost gets mixed up in the problems of the boy, his dad, and the woman being set up to be Chris's new mom.

Only Loughlin manages to project some sincerity into her unrewarding role, while everyone else-- including such guest-stars as Rodney Dangerfield and Sherman Hemsley-- just does the bare minimum. In the end, Kibosh changes his mind and decides Casper can continue to haunt the house with the Trio. The second DTV film, reviewed here, kept the same director but received a superior script from one Jymm Magon, and also benefited from a cast of bigger names.

CASPER MEETS WENDY was followed by two computer-animated films, one released to the DTV market and one to television. 

First in 2000 came the more inventive of the two, CASPER'S HAUNTED CHRISTMAS. Despite the events of SPIRITED, the Warm-Hearted Wraith once more gets in trouble with Kibosh for his lack of intentional scaring. Therefore Kibosh exiles the Friendly Phantasm to the town of Kriss, Massachusetts, where people seem to celebrate Xmas all year round. It's not clear why Kibosh sends Casper there, but he also sends along the Ghostly Trio because (a) they don't like Christmas, (b) he doesn't like them,  and (c) they unlike Casper are forbidden to scare people, because he takes away their haunting licenses. Kibosh, who's more gratuitously sadistic in this outing, hopes Casper will fail so that he can consign all four ghosts to the fearsome dimension known as "The Dark."

As soon as Casper arrives in Kriss, he has a "meet-non-scary" with middle-schooler Holli Jollimore, who gets the idea that he's a talking snowman rather than a spirit. Holly enjoys taking to the "snow ghost" because she gets sick of her parents' mania for all things Christmassy. (The script works in both a George Bailey joke and one about "yellow snow.") 

The Trio try to teach Casper how to scare the Kriss citizens, but he's a hopeless case. But they get an inspiration: they can fake a Casper-scare by calling in his almost-lookalike cousin Spooky (an invention of the CASPER comics). They hope to deceive Kibosh's lieutenant, who's watching their every move, into thinking Casper scared someone, thus saving them all from the Dark. Spooky shows up with his girl Poil (both sporting heavy Bronx accents) and the Trio make him think impersonating Casper is an initiation stunt he must pass before joining their esteemed ranks.

Perhaps needless to say, Spooky's endeavors don't bear much fruit, except to mess up the friendship of Casper and Holly. Clever references to SCREAM, PSYCHO, SAY ANYTHING, and HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS make up somewhat for a couple of very treacly songs. Eventually Casper is able to both mend fences with his living friend and to put the, uh, kibosh on Kibosh's plans for him and his uncles. Of the five Casper films, HAUNTED is easily the funniest Casper film, and far superior to any of the repetitive cartoon shorts that gave birth to the Affable Apparition. It joins CASPER AND WENDY in being one of the few media creations to adapt any of the Harvey Comics characters that crossed paths with comic-book Casper. 

CASPER'S SCARE SCHOOL is novel in that the Friendly Ghost spends only minimal time when a human friend named Jimmy. Tough spectral overseer Kibosh, making his third appearance, decides that Casper needs to build up his "scare skills" at an academy for apparitions. This plot development also leads to a much reduced screen time for the increasingly tiresome Ghostly Trio.

Once Casper's on the way to Scare School aboard a ghost ship captained by a pirate wearing two eyepatches (and guided by his talking parrot), he meets his fellow students, all mini-monsters like himself. The friendly phantasm bonds with a boy mummy and a girl zombie (whose body parts fall off all the time), but he also makes an enemy in an arrogant vampire kid, Thatch. At Scare School Casper encounters various weird teachers, though only one is consequential to the plot: a two-headed headmaster named Alder-and-Dash, though they're distinct in that one head is smart and the other stupid. 

Assorted school escapades transpire, many which involve Thatch trying to undermine Casper. The friendly ghost also learns that there's supposed some cosmic order maintained by monsters scaring humans, and that the consequence of a monster not scaring a human is that he/she must be banished to the Valley of Shadows. Casper finally decides to seek out the Valley, only to find that it's inhabited by other pacific spirits. It's a place Casper would like to stay, but duty calls him back to Scare School, where the evil headmaster plans to nullify Kibosh and place the Underworld under his (their?) control. James Belushi and Bob Saget portrayed the two heads of the headmaster, and Phyllis Diller's character was one of her last roles before she passed into that other valley of shadow.