Casper’s Haunted Christmas (2000)

Less budget, and less stars, this time Casper’s adventures are reduced to a pretty crummy animated feature where Casper teams up with another spunky young girl. She’s a girl facing a crisis about Christmas and she needs the help of… Casper. Makes sense, I guess. “Casper’s Haunted Christmas” is a noticeably bargain basement style production compared to the previous movies, all the while the animation is often weird and the narrative nonsensical.

Still on the run from the series villain Kibosh, Casper and his trio of uncles, Casper is confronted by the evil ghost for not committing to his ghost quota. Despite Casper completely swore off haunting he’s doomed if he doesn’t begin scaring people and will be sent off to the dark place. So how did he and his uncles escape that law originally? Casper ends up in a town named (ugh) Kriss, Massachussets, which celebrating Christmas.

There, he forms a bond with a girl named Holli Jollimoore who is having a rotten Christmas. There is no excuse for a movie with this kind of bad animation. The character models are clunky and under developed, and the general aesthetic is ugly. That is saying a lot considering this is a movie combining Halloween and Chrisq At the very least, Harvey comics fans will appreciate seeing Casper’s cousin Spooky and Pearl making a big appearance. It’s a shame that the original shorts had more heart than these stale productions meant to grab some bucks. If you have to have your Casper fix, buy some Harvey comics, or fork some money over for the original shorts.