There's been a lot of speculation about the coming age of computerized performances in the movies, when we will see whole characters made up of bits and bytes. Jessica Rabbit was such a creation, and now Casper and his uncles - Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso - dominate a movie that essentially stars computer programming.
Ghosts offer, to be sure, certain advantages to the programmers, since their bodies are soft and changeable, but their faces display a full range of emotion, and they are as real as the human characters in the film - which is, I suppose, a two-edged compliment.
As the movie opens, a rich man's daughter named Carrigan (Cathy Moriarty) learns that her father has left her nothing in his will, except for crumbling Whipstaff Manor in Maine. She's enraged, until her assistant, Dibs (Eric Idle), discovers a secret message suggesting that a vast treasure may be hidden there. They leave immediately for Maine - where, of course, it turns out that Whipstaff Manor is haunted.
She determines to get rid of the ghosts, and the movie has a lot of fun with scenes involving an exorcist (Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci) and a ghostbuster (Dan Aykroyd). Nothing works. Meanwhile, Casper, the resident ghost, pulls himself away from watching "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" long enough to learn, on the news, about a ghost psychiatrist who specializes in helping spirits come to peace with themselves, so they won't need to haunt any longer.
Casper draws the program to Carrigan's attention in an insistent if ghostly way, and soon the psychiatrist (Bill Pullman, from "While You Were Sleeping") is on the case, along with his daughter Kat (Christina Ricci, from "The Addams Family"). Kat and Casper soon become fast friends, and Casper is telling her what it's like to be a ghost: "You know that tingling feeling when your foot falls asleep? I think I'm made of that." Unfortunately, the presence of flesh and blood in Whipstaff Manor draws Casper's uncles from an ectoplasm, and things get exciting.
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