Introduction
So, I know nobody asked, but I have a hot-take on Casper, the 1995 family-friendly spooktacular. Suppose you’re not familiar with this classic cinematic masterpiece. In that case, this article will obviously contain some spoilers. Still, since it’s been available for private viewing for over three decades, I might question the integrity of your viewing pleasure and why you’ve never watched it. This is my take. Follow me here for just a moment: Casper, in its essence, is a sort of Christ narrative. Before you roll your eyes with skepticism and/or disdain, hear me out.
Welcome to Friendship
Casper opens in the fictional town of Friendship, Maine, USA, where two boys are breaking into an old mansion, the Whipstaff Manor (‘It was lousy 50 years ago. Now, it’s condemned.’). The boys attempt to capture photographic evidence of the notorious mansion’s insides, and while arguing over who takes the photo, a friendly voice chimes in, ‘Guys, guys! I’ll take the picture!’ As the camera floats away, seemingly by itself, the bulb flashes, and the boys’ petrified faces appear on a fresh Polaroid that falls to the ground. They bolt, screaming, from the mansion.
Smash-cut to the law firm of Mr. Ruth (Ben Stein), who is serving as executor to the will of one of his clients, the late father of Carrigan Crittenden (played by Cathy Moriarty). Carrigan, a capital-B Brat if ever there was one, is furious to learn that her father, through his deed, has left her nothing of substantive value except for the aforementioned haunted manor. (‘Flipper got more money than me!’)
In a selfish fit, the greedy heiress tosses the deed into the fireplace. Still, it is rescued by her attorney and close associate, “Dibs” (played by Eric Idle), who also discovers, through the disintegrating deed, that a hidden treasure is buried somewhere within the Whipstaff Manor. The duo ventures to the fictional Friendship like buccaneers in pursuit of gold.
Ghosts in the House
Upon arrival at the Mansion, however, Carrigan and Dibs meet a trio of cranky poltergeists (Casper’s Uncles Stretch, Fatso, and Stinky). They get scared off when the ghostly trio transforms itself into a roaring whirlwind tornado. Carrigan and Dibs then employ a series of tactics to exorcise the ghosts, to no avail. Finally, they contact Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman), a “ghost psychiatrist” who is basically a therapist to what he refers to as the “living impaired.” He’s also a widower and single father.
Dr. Harvey’s loner daughter, Kat (Christina Ricci), is understandably embarrassed by her father’s profession. She believes he only does this to search for the ghost of his deceased wife, Kat’s mother, Amelia Harvey (played by the incomparable Amy Brenneman). More on her shortly.
Dr. Harvey makes a pinky promise to Kat. If he can’t find what he’s looking for in Friendship, he’ll stop moving her all around the country and renounce his vocation as a psycho-clinical therapist to the dead, or undead, or recently deceased, or whatever.
Meeting Casper
After meeting Carrigan and Dibs, Kat and her father move into the Whipstaff Manor to rid the estate of its haunters (presumably with therapy?), but Kat quickly becomes friends with a formerly living 12-year-old boy named Casper (voiced by Malachi Pearson).
As Kat and Casper explore their dichotomous living/dead friendship, Casper shows Kat a secret room in Whipstaff, where she learns that in the early 19th century, after staying outside sledding for too long against his father’s wishes, Casper died of pneumonia, which understandably causes his father immense grief.
Casper decides to remain in the realm of the living so that his father, the renowned inventor J.T. McFadden, will never be lonely. Subsequently, this spirals into a kind of mania for Mr. McFadden. He’s haunted by the ghost of his dead son (sort of an inversion of the Hamlet scenario). Casper suddenly remembers that his father had built a machine called the Lazarus, which resurrects the living from the dead.
Lazarus
For those of you, like me, who have a limited understanding of Christian theology, Lazarus was a figure in the New Testament Gospel of John (11:1-44) whom Jesus Christ resurrected, in Bethany, from the dead. This was Christ’s final miracle before the crucifixion. For saints to be venerated in this theological tradition, they must perform a heavenly miracle on earth.
By way of a Ruth-Goldbergesque roller coaster thing that runs beneath the Whipstaff library’s floorboards, Casper and Kat descend to his father’s underground laboratory, followed by treasure-hunting burglars Carrigan and Dibs. While looking for a way to quite literally raise the Lazarus machine from the depths of a foggy pool, Kat discovers a large volume on McFadden Sr.’s desk: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
It might also be worth mentioning here that Frankenstein, if you remember from your 10th-grade English class, was inspired by the Greek myth of Prometheus. He was a mortal that the gods chained to a rock at the base of a mountain as eternal punishment for stealing heavenly fire and giving it to mankind. Kat opens the volume and discovers a large black button, which reveals the resurrection machine.
The Resurrection
Carrigan and Dibs also witness this and discover Casper’s father’s vault (which they figure one of them can die, come back as a ghost, penetrate the vault’s solid door, get the booty — so to speak — and use the Lazarus machine to cross back over into earthly flesh). Carrigan steals a container of “primordial soup,” and now she and Dibs must decide who dies to enter the vault.
Since neither are obviously willing, Carrigan and Dibs attempt to kill one another, and after running all over the mansion, Carrigan misses hitting Dibs with her car, crashes into a tree on the side of a cliff, and steps out of her vehicle to meet a rocky-bottomed doom.
By this point, Kat’s dad has made a deal with the ghostly trio to meet with the spirit of his dead wife. What he doesn’t realize is that he also must become a ghost to encounter her ghostly visage. During an impromptu Karaoke Happy Hour with Casper’s uncles, Dr. Harvey accidentally, drunkenly, and perhaps coincidentally falls off a cliff’s edge and meets his rocky-bottomed end.
The Final Act
So now all the stories of the living and dead converge in the final act, which, for some reason, to me, is particularly emotionally poignant. Kat’s schoolmates arrive for a Halloween dance at the Whipstaff Manor. This is a side-plot which I forgot to mention. Casper has been wanting to go to this dance with Kat, even though he has no flesh, no pulse, and makes Kat chilly any time he gets a little too friendly.
The ghost of Carrigan returns to the underground layer, enters the vault, and emerges with Casper’s father’s literal chest of treasure (which winds up being just a baseball and a glove). Kat and Casper trick Carrigan into exclaiming that she (Carrigan) doesn’t have any “unfinished business” in this realm, a ghost’s sort of raison d’être, and foolhardy Carrigan, pierced by spears of light, explodes into a cloud of sparkling dust.
The ghost of Dr. James Harvey now enters through the sub-strata layer of the laboratory. Kat, understandably distraught, looks through the fleshless face of her father, and upon seeing her dismay, Casper pulls the ghostly father-figure into the Lazarus chamber and sacrifices his opportunity to live once again so that her father can be resurrected.
A Noble Deed
Late for the dance, Kat and her newly resurrected Dad ascend from the laboratory. Casper retreats to his secret room, where he then encounters another spirit from the other side, Kat’s deceased mother, the angelic Amelia Harvey. Looking positively stunning and wearing a flowing red gown with a sheer neckline, Amelia (the incomparable Amy Brenneman) descends into Casper’s room.
As a gift for his noble deed, Amelia bestows Casper with earthly flesh for one dance with her daughter, until the clock strikes ten (‘Sort of a Cinderella deal’). According to Amelia, Casper’s sacrifice, which makes his father proud, earns Casper the gift of incarnate flesh to finally make his dream come true.
Conclusion
It might be my eyes or the spectral visage, but everything gets a little blurry as the light begins to play strange little tricks. Amelia Harvey then appears briefly in a Deus ex Machina fashion to Dr. Harvey. They hover above on the balcony of Whipstaff’s grand foyer, one living, one dead (the inverse of Casper and Kat).
The reunited parents watch their daughter slow-dance with Casper, and Amelia offers some moral advice to Dr. Harvey on parenting their teenage daughter. Stop eavesdropping on her conversations. Trust her. Feed her a balanced breakfast, not junk food, and let her wear whatever she wants, specifically with regard to public swimming pools. After all, their daughter is becoming a young woman.
If there is any theologically derivative moral to be gleaned here, it’s that Amy Brenneman, in a cameo role as messenger from above, always delivers!
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