Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Spooktober: The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (1996)

In the wake of the live action/CGI adaptation of Casper that starred Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci a year earlier, the Friendly Ghost returned to television after 16 years away in a mid-season replacement series that aired on Fox (and later, Fox Family).

As established in the movie, Casper's full name is Casper McFadden (voiced by Malachi Pearson), who died of pneumonia as a youth, and it seems he's smitten with young Kathleen "Kat" Harvey (Kath Soucie), whose father is a scientist. As we'll see in the first short, "Paranormal Press", Casper's school schedule isn't quite the same as Kat's, enabling him to join Kat at Friendship Junior High against her wishes, though she finds that he can be quite helpful.

I cannot recall if Spooky's girlfriend, Pearl, or, Poil, as Spooky always calls her, had appeared in the 1963 series. Here, though, she's presented as being a bit of an absent-minded airhead, contrary to her comic book portrayal as a domineering type. Spooky is established as being Casper's cousin, which I'm not sure might be the case in the books.

Kat has her share of struggles dealing with the mean girls in school, as we'll also see. The supporting cast also includes Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons, Aladdin) taking over for Bill Pullman as Dr. Harvey, and Ben Stein, one year before getting his Comedy Central game show, is heard as a teacher. Since this was a Universal-Harvey-Amblin co-production, some of the Amblin crew (i.e. Sherri Stoner) came over from Tiny Toon Adventures, Pinky & The Brain, & Animaniacs.

The lineup:

"Paranormal Press": Casper helps Kat start her journalism career at Friendship Jr. High, with predictable results.

"Another Spooky & Poil Moment": Spooky tries to impress his teacher, but Poil seems to be uncharacteristically fouling things up. Weak point of the show.

"Deadstock": Casper takes up the bagpipes, annoying Kat, but it leads to a concert....



I like the idea of Casper actually wearing clothes in this series as he tries to fit in. Fox farmed the show out to Fox Family (now Freeform as a Disney cabler) after ratings began to decline.

Rating: B (down from my original review).

4 comments:

Goldstar said...

You gave that show a higher rating than I would have. I thought Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper was remarkably weak. Even the writing talents of Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver couldn't save this show from mediocrity. To be fair, they weren't given much to work with. The producers wanted very much for this show to be "Animaniacs Too", but it wasn't. When you get down to it, Casper just isn't a very interesting character and the fact that the entire series is about a dead kid adds a depressing tone the show.

The show's premise didn't even make sense within it's own context; the film established that only dead people with unfinished business on Earth come back as ghosts, so why were Casper and his uncles just hanging out in this dimension for seemingly no reason?

Also, this series had Spooky, who never appeared in the live action movies, yet Wendy the Good Little Witch didn't make a single appearance on the show. There was the 2nd film sequel, Casper Meets Wendy, but that happened after this series, I believe.

hobbyfan said...

IIRC, Casper Meets Wendy (w/Hilary Duff & Pauly Shore) was the last film in the series, and was DTV.

Goldstar said...

Yep. Both Capser: A Spirited Beginning (1997) and Casper Meets Wendy (1998) were both direct to video, and both were also made after "Spooktacular New Adventures". To date, there haven't been any other movies, but there was Casper's Scare School, a CG animated series imported from Canada.

hobbyfan said...

I have a Scare School clip up elsewhere, and something else from that series could turn up over the next 2 weeks.