Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper"

When hinges creek in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls... it can only mean one thing. That you're on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World. But there's a very good chance that you're riding it on Halloween. And that, my dear friends, is what we call a lousy way of saying that Halloween is near. Which you probably already know, because I've already reviewed two "spooky" cartoons due to it being the Halloween season already.

Halloween is the time for watching stuff about monsters. You know, skeletons and werewolves and vampires and ghosts. There's no better time of the year to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas or ParaNorman or whatever. So it should come as no surprise that when Universal decided to make a movie about Casper the Friendly Ghost, they chose to release it... in May. Maybe they were saving October for the release date of another film, I dunno.

Casper did reasonably well at the box office and some good reviews... keyword: SOME. It currently has a fifty-percent "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but there are still a lot of people who like it. I mean, why ELSE would Freeform always air it at least once around Halloween? As for me, I remember watching it when I was younger, then never watching it again (unless watching the Nostalgia Critic's review of it counts) until 2015, when I decided to give it another watch. And, honestly, I really didn't like it.

Well, anyway, despite making at least $287.9 million at the box office, the film wasn't successful as Universal had hoped, so that put the kibosh (no pun intended) on there being a sequel. It did get some prequels a couple years later, though. But anyone who wanted to find out what happened to the characters AFTER the movie as opposed to BEFORE it had to settle for watching The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper.

The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper premiered on FOX Kids in February 1996, lasting for a total of four seasons. Developed by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver, the writers of the original film, the show focused on the misadventures that Casper (voiced, like in the film, by Malachi Pearson) got into alongside his obnoxious uncles Stretch (Joe Nipote), Stinky (Joe Alaskey), and Fatso (Brad Garrett in the first two seasons, then Jess Harnell in the third and fourth), ghost psychologist Dr. Harvey (Dan Castellaneta) and his daughter Kat (Kath Souice). New characters include Casper's teacher Ms. Banshee (Tress MacNeille), his cousin Spooky the Tuff Ghost (Rob Paulsen), and Spooky's girlfriend Poil (Sherry Lynn).

Is the show any good? I remember watching one or two episodes of it years ago and finding it okay. If nothing else, it can't be any worse than the movie, right? Then again, the show apparently focuses more on Casper's uncles than it does Casper himself. There's one episode where they point this out by having Casper ask why the show is called The Spooktacular New Adventures of CASPER if it's more about his uncles, to which Stretch says, "Merchandising." As someone who found Casper's uncles grating in the movie, that does not exactly fill me with confidence.

Regardless, let's watch an episode of the show and see if Casper's new adventures are really "spooktacular" or if the only thing scary about this show is how bad it is. Each episode consists of at least two (four at the most) segments. We'll be watching the fourth episode. First segment - "Rocket Booster".

The episode starts off with Kat in a bad mood because her homework assignment "totally tanks". Were people really using "tanks" as another word for "stinks" in the 1990s? Is that an example of 1990s slang that I didn't know about before?

Something you'll notice about Kat is that she looks absolutely nothing like the live action Kat in the movie. Also, Kath Souice sounds absolutely nothing like Christina Ricci. I believe this stems from the fact that, like most cartoons based on live action movies, the showrunners didn't have the rights to Christina Ricci's likeness.

"Say, Kat, did you dye your hair? I could've sworn it was brown in the movie..."

Kat's assignment is to write an essay about the Apollo 13 astronauts as though she was actually there. What grade is she in? She doesn't look old enough to be a high schooler, nor does she look young enough to be an elementary schooler, and I don't remember ever having to write something about Apollo 13 when I was in middle school.

Casper tells her that he can tell her all about Apollo 13 because, believe it or not, he was actually there. Seeing as there's no mention of Casper on the Apollo 13's Wikipedia page, I'm pretty skeptical. As is Kat. Why, next you'll probably be telling me that Goofy was part of Buzz Aldrin's crew or something.

"That's one small step for goof, one giant leap for goof-kind, a-HYUCK!"

It all started, according to Casper, when he flew down to Florida in 1970 to get baseball player Wedgie Johnson's autograph. Unfortunately, when Wedgie actually SAW Casper, he wet his pants at the sight of the g-g-g-g-GHOST, hit the autographed ball into the air with his baseball bat for some reason, and ran away screaming.

You'd think Casper would be used to this sort of reaction by now...

The ball flew all the way through the open door of the Apollo 13 shuttle, and when Casper shows up to get it back, he winds up scaring a news reporter. Initially, it's not funny because they just did this exact same joke ten seconds ago. But then the reporter actually blasts off like a rocket (get it? 'Cause they're at a rocket launching?) and it becomes hilarious.

Casper follows the rocket into outer space, and we get the "Casper accidentally scares someone" joke AGAIN. If you're going to recycle a joke, at least spread it out a little. The ball hits a big red button that causes one of the oxygen tanks to fall off. Why would whoever built this rocket put a button that releases the oxygen tank when you push it? That seems like a really dumb idea to me.

The oxygen tank explodes, and the astronauts are panicking because they LIKE being alive.

They're also unbelievably incompetent, seeing as they think THIS is gonna bring the
oxygen back.

One of the astronauts makes a reference to Forrest Gump. Because... hey, that movie exists, right? Houston tells them to locate the oxygen tank toggle, but it takes the astronauts a few seconds to find it despite Casper pointing it out to them.

So... is this going to be most of the episode? Just the astronauts being morons and Casper having to walk them through every single step of surviving?

"Duh, which button do I press? Could it be the one that the random giant green arrow
is pointing to?"

Casper makes a bunch of unfunny jokes ("I don't think he realizes the gravity of this situation." Nyuck nyuck nyuck...) and we get the "Casper accidentally scares someone because he's a ghost" gag AGAIN. That's FOUR TIMES they've done this joke. FOUR TIMES. It's really getting repetitive.

So Casper fixes the oxygen problem, but there's still a damaged heat shield they have to worry about. If they enter the earth's atmosphere with it, they'll be roasted like a Christmas goose. And, okay, I did like this joke:

Awfully casual about being burned alive, aren't you, Mr. Astronaut?

Casper acts as a makeshift heat shield, saving the astronauts from becoming Kentucky Fried Spacemen.

We cut to Kat reading her essay to the class, and predictably, nobody believes her claims that a ghost saved the Apollo 13 (she really should've expected that). The teacher gives her an "A" in creative writing but tells her that she'll have to do her science report over. Casper gets back at him by pulling his pants down. Yes, kindhearted Casper the Friendly Ghost pantsing somebody. Not exactly in-character, but at least it results in a Woody Woodpecker cameo.

"I knew I should've worn my Chilly Willy boxers!"

The class laughs, and the teacher nervously backs out of the room. "Now THAT'S a moonwalk!" Kat quips.

Next segment...

Oh, goody, it's Casper's annoying uncles. They're giving Casper a hard time for not being scary... okay, I'm calling bullcrap. In the first segment alone Casper scared four people without even intending to. It's a Running Gag in the original cartoons that people are scared of him despite how friendly he is.

Casper tells his uncles that he CAN scare people, he just doesn't WANT to. "Listen, Bulbhead," Stretch snaps, "You couldn't be scary if you were Tori Spelling's shopping budget!" Ha ha ha, pop culture reference. But then Casper actually DOES scare them by... playing a record of some woman singing in a foreign language? Huh? I straight-up do not get the joke here.

The third segment begins with Casper talking about how lucky humans are that they don't have to scare anybody. So, I'm guessing this episode is gonna have Casper going all Ariel on us and wishing he could be a human. While he's complaining, he winds up getting some of Kat's makeup on himself. And, if he adds some ears, that'll give him the appearance of being a human. More or less, anyway.

"I'm a real boy!"

He puts on some clothes, turns his... tail-like whisp thing into legs, and presto! He looks like a normal, everyday human being. He heads into town, for once NOT scaring anybody, not even the Arnold Schwartzenegger parody who's here so that the episode can make tired Arnold Schwartzenegger jokes. He walks into a store called "McNeil's Deals" (perhaps a reference to Tress MacNeille?), only for the owner to forbid him from touching anything or else he'd have a lawsuit on his hands if Casper got hurt. Then he decides to go to the movies.

What do these two actors have in common? Hint: they were both in a 1995 movie
that this show takes inspiration from.

Alas, he isn't allowed to go see the movie he wants to because it's rated PG-13. Fortunately, he has a backup plan - go to the local soda shop for some ice cream.

He looks eerily like Caillou, doesn't he?

I expected the joke here to be that Casper, being a ghost, can't eat human food (probably with some cliched "it goes right through me" punchline), but nope, he guzzles it down with no problem. Then he gets the bill, and since he doesn't have the money to pay for it, he winds up getting tossed out on his butt (assuming that ghosts HAVE butts, I mean). Then a runaway piano (it makes sense in context, trust me) runs Casper down, resulting in all the people he encountered in his human disguise thinking that he's been killed. The moral of today's story is to be proud of what you are. Unless you're a human boy, in which case it sucks to be you.

What's the Verdict?

Well, it was better than the movie, I'll give it that. I still didn't care much for it. Not only does Casper sound way too old for a character that's supposed to be a little boy ghost, they made him waaaaaaaay too snarky and easily-aggravated. I don't think it's in-character for Casper, whose entire shtick is that he's a total sweetheart despite being a ghost, to crack jokes at somebody's expense like he does with the astronauts. The jokes are mostly unfunny pop culture references. I suppose that's to be expected since the writers worked on Animaniacs. The animation's pretty good, I'll give it that. But as a whole, it's not an awful show, it's just very blah. I don't think the Animaniacs style of writing (pop culture references and characters being snarky) fits Casper very well.

Side note, there was apparently an episode of the show that parodied Space Jam. No, really. It had Casper and his friends playing basketball against ghostly versions of the Warner Siblings. Unfortunately, that episode doesn't seem to be online yet. I feel the urge to watch it just to see how ludicrous it is.

Further reading:
- Platypus Comix's review of the show