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One of my all time favorites.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This Casper prequel is such a nostalgia trip for me that I don't think I can ever hate it. There are flaws and this is truly not a good movie, but over the years I was able to see how there could have been two good movies.Notice I've said "TWO good movies." There's nothing wrong with multiple stories happening (checkout 'Magnolia' and 'Short Cuts'), but when neither reach any kind of potential they have, you know it has bitten off more than it can chew. The first story involves how Casper became a friendly ghost. It is never said how he actually becomes the ghost, just that he needs to graduate a scare school. This unfinished background could easily have been avoided. Barely anything else happens with Casper and the scare school the rest of the movie.The other story takes up the chunk of the film. It involves neglected ten-year-old outcast named Chris Carson whose single-parent father Tim (Steven Guttenberg) is a municipal workaholic. To make matters worse, Chris' overactive imagination has made him a perfect target for bullies. Tim really wants to tear down the city's landmark Applegate Mansion for more profitable estate, a move strongly opposed by Chris' teacher (Lori Loughlin). The Mansion is where the Ghostly Trio lives and where Casper's friendship with Chris grows. Aside from a few cool scenes of Casper doing fun ghost actions, the entire movie mostly deals with Chris' loneliness and Casper comforting him. Bad move making Casper just a side character.The bitterness between Chris and Tim is heartbreaking and badly done. There has been lots of movies where parents are workaholics, but Tim just seems like a severely selfish, incompetent parent. There is even the scene that boils so much that it causes Chris to just run away. That is such a gut-wrenching scene because Tim is such a mean father and his constant neglect is child abuse. The bullies jump Chris and lock him in the mansion hours before its demolition. Chris' near death situation (and a little conversation with Casper) gives Tim a change of heart and realizes how bad a parent he's been. But what angers me and most people about this is how little payoff there was. The bullies should have been put on trial, but they just get wedgies. Tim's realization was a major copout. If this was a movie all by itself without Casper, I guarantee there would have been no shortcuts and there would have been suitable payoffs. Same thing goes for the Casper story. The special effects (which really aren't that bad, typical late 90s tv CGI) and star-studded cast were not enough to save this.

This is basically an excuse for a prequel to the original and quite successful family film, but it is just another crap failure. This straight to video film tells the story of the friendly good-natured young ghoul that we have grown to love (not in this), and how he became a ghost. Casper begins on a train filled with ghosts, then he goes to the city and discovers he is a ghost. The only problems is that he does not want to scare people, he wants to make friends. He becomes friends with a young boy, but he is told by three other ghosts that he shouldn't be friendly. This is just corny, stupid comedy, alright animation and rubbish acting. Poor!

The 1995 movie is my favourite movie of all time, with great voice-overs and touching performances and a good plot. This was the first Casper flick made by Power Ranger creators Saban, and can't you tell. It's dire. There's no continuity with the first film, many, many character errors, terrible acting, ridiculous plot and the story was awful. Awful. And to make it even worse they came out with two more tripe sequels after this one. Oh woe. Bring back the animated series (based on the '95 movie), that was better than the three shabby sequels put together, and then some!Please, please, don't waste your money on this. I wouldn't even buy it for a very young child. Even they can tell that this is just a sad rip-off, riding on the first films success.

I loved the first movie, and I still do... I can't believe they ruined this sequel... there shouldn't have been any sequel in the first place anyway...It's not just the boring story that annoys me, but the fact they changed the story. The first movie takes place after this movie, where they mention a lot of things from the past, but in this movie they just ignored the history lesson from the first movie, and completely rewrite Casper's history...You remember in the first movie Casper used to live in the house? In this movie he only found this house my 'accident', without having ever lived there before...I hate when they change important parts of the story in films... :shame: