The Bechdel Cast - Casper

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

This week, friendly ghosts Caitlin and Jamie discuss Casper and remind you to listen to Jamie's limited series, Ghost Church! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ghost-church-by-jamie-loftus/id1619557591 (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There's some slight static here and there at the beginning of the episode, but it goes away pretty quickly, so you won't hear it for most of the episode. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up. Thanks for understanding and enjoy the episode. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey Jamie. Hey Caitlinlin can i keep you no it's cold close the window i love how she was like can you close the window it's cold good night

god what a what a creepy little ghost welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it? Well, the Bechdel test is a test in which... well and also i should tell you where it came from it came from uh uh oh god sorry i just watched casper the friendly ghost and so i was like so this okay this is not gonna pass i just so frothingly horny for bill pullman daddy that i'm not fully with it at this time.

It's a media metric invented by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. There's many permutations of this test. Here's the one that we use here at the Bechdel cast. We require that two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue and you know some movies do it many don't and my new favorite thing is when a movie when it's clear that they get like a note that it didn't pass the Bechdel test and then they do a small reshoot and

add in a completely nonsensical scene just to say they passed sure I want to I've been trying to keep better track of those in movies because I'm trying to think of which there was a movie I saw recently that was like newer that I'm like this feels like a weird anyways it's complicated right because I feel like that would be the case for more recent movies people weren't no people weren't thinking about this back it didn't come into the popular consciousness until like i feel like late 2000s early 2010s even though it was invented back in the 80s and then and then our podcast it's the only thing we actually talk about because we invented it we popularized it no i'm kidding but um yeah recent movies are i think doing a better job at passing generally generally yes

but but sometimes you still see some some things i don't know i think i just am in a crummy mood because you're just like the the state of the these days caitlin i'm just not convinced that the world is uh less misogynist what then it ever well just less prejudice in general um no we live in a hellscape on that note let's talk about casper the friendly ghost uh i'd love to okay so i'll start by saying this this episode you might be like wait a second it's june why are you covering casper the friendly ghost this seems more like a halloweeny pic well the reason we're covering casper the friendly ghost is because it's a little bit of synergy it's a little bit of cross promotion if you will um because listeners it's pretty there's nothing scarier than corporate

synergy yeah and and by corporate i mean just me um so so i have a new investigative series right now coming out called ghost church uh It is about the American spiritualist movement, which was kind of this movement that existed in the 1800s. It still exists now. It's evolved in all these freaky ways. But it's basically founded on the idea of like spirit communication, that the dead don't really die. It doesn't really play by Casper rules. But yeah, the overview of the show is it's a history of this bizarre religion and its founders who were women religious leaders at a time where there weren't a lot of women religious leaders,

but they're kind of girl bossing around. It's a wild story. And then it also is, the other half of it is my experience going to a spiritualist camp this year and talking with spirit mediums who are still working today. So if that sounds like a fun thing to you, I would love if you listened. It was a really fun, kind of like challenging piece to put together. And I hope you like it. So we were looking for, and I'll sort of bring up, because there are like some spiritualist ideas in Casper,

the movie's concept of death, but it's also the movie's so all over the place that I feel like death is viewed just like however the movie needs you to view it from scene to scene like sometimes it's the biggest deal in the world and then other times they're like who gives a shit you're like well which what's it what are there it doesn't matter it's a great movie but we were looking for movies about spirit communication and it made me think about spiritualism as like i've been studying it and understanding it because most of the stuff like a lot of spiritualism is built around the idea of the seance. But most seances as they're presented in movies are like bad or conjure something evil or you need like a Christian to come and resolve what you've unleashed via a seance which is the opposite of what

spiritualism is about spiritualism is like an attempt to like take a step away from the idea of like good and evil they're very into redemption and like redemptive justice and and all these like I mean there are plenty of issues with it with the religion, but it is far more progressive than Catholicism, for example, which is weirdly what you'll mostly get in seance movies is like a Catholic priest showing up to reverse what the seance did. It's hard to find a feel good movie about death. And that's where Casper the Friendly Ghost comes in. And that's where Casper the friendly ghost comes in and that's where casper comes in because the only other movie that's like explicitly about spiritualism

is nightmare alley that came out last year right which again is pretty unfavorable which is like fine but uh more importantly no one watched the movie and we didn't like it so that's why with all due respect to king guillermo del toro yeah it was so boring it was no pan's labyrinth i i get really i'm like you're just gonna not give runy mara anything to do what a waste what a waste of everyone's time anyways uh so that's why we're doing casper this is actually one of the more like open-minded views of death that you can find in a movie or spirit communication at least sure yes so yeah listen to ghost church we'll keep talking about spirit communication but caitlin yeah what's your history with casper 1995 oh my gosh this movie came out when i was nine years old so i was the exact right age hell yeah see it and love it and be obsessed with it

and i especially loved the production design although i wasn't like a nine-year-old being like wow look at this set design amazing the house is so cool though it's so cool still so cool yeah the house holds up the Casper house holds up so I just like loved the spooky sets and the and the house and then when they go into like the secret layer where the Lazarus machine is and like that all that so cool I like loved it and I did you realize the Backstreet Boys connection no oh my gosh this is the kind of you know like when you learn a fun fact and you're like I know I've learned this before but I just like relearned it today and it's fun all the time yeah right in our advanced age uh sometimes things just slip um the music video for backstreet's back all right where all the backstreet boys

are dressed up in halloween costumes and they're dancing in the mansion that's the casper mansion it's the same mansion and every time you see the wide shot you're like this looks familiar and it's the backstreet's back mansion because that song came out in like 1996. So they just like shared a set. Repurposed. Yeah. The Casper House. Isn't that the coolest?

Yeah. Legendary. And it's just beautiful and awesome. And yeah. So anyway, I loved it at the time. But I don't think I watched it past probably like 1997. Because again, famously, Titanic comes out. but I don't think I saw I watched it past probably like 1997 because again famously Titanic comes out and I didn't watch any other movies for a solid decade yeah totally so I you

know there was that couple year chunk in the mid to late 90s when I was obsessed with this movie but I hadn't watched it since so re-watching it oh wow for the podcast was interesting. And my thesis statement will be that Casper is a creepy little pervert. Okay. Now, now. Now, now. Thoughts? I definitely think that Casper's behavior is not great.

But I don't know. I really love this movie still. It's like, it's going to be hard. I mean, I just like, every time I see this movie. Still? Still. Oh my gosh, yes. Like, I don't remember when I first,

I like, this was just like a VHS that was always at our house. And I loved Casper, not just Casper, the Casper expanded universe because there were two direct to video sequels that came out after this. It was called like Casper. Oh my gosh. There, for some reason, like just so many awakenings for me, uh, happened via this Casper franchise there was a direct oh my god this this is gonna drive me wild and I do need to know what this direct movie was called but anyways this movie was one of my favorites when I was a kid I still watch it every couple years I think it was like yeah I like to watch it around Halloween time I just think it's like, there's so much wrong with it. But it is a problematic

favorite for me that I like that I still think is doing a lot of like, funny, cool stuff that like, I don't know, like, there's things that happened in this movie that don't happen in movies anymore, because they shouldn't. And then there's things that happened in this movie that don't happen in movies anymore that I'm like, where'd that go was fun sure i liked that like it's just really chaotic i feel like they're like especially because it's like an ip a piece of like ip i feel like now people are so like precious with like rebooting ip where it's all very like sterile and I don't know like you think about how sexless the Marvel movies are and how it's like they can be funny but they actually can't be funny and it's just like you just feel so much like caution in some ways that is good and undoes harmful things that were done

in movies in the past and then it's just sometimes you're like yeah why so much of this movie is just like there's a ruckus yeah wild wild choices yeah I used to be completely in love with every character in this movie I loved Christina Ricci's character so much wanted to be her was also in love with her father thought Bill Pullman's dad is was really handsome still really feel that way Kathy Moriarty is like there's just so much so much campiness in this movie too in a way that just like happens in movies now but I feel like doesn't happen in like big kids movies I don't know maybe I'm totally wrong and i'm just not watching the right movies but but yeah like this movie is just so goofy and campy and like if you showed it to a kid right now it's also so 1995 that they'd be like what is this like who is rodney dangerfield oh my gosh the cameos are wild mel gibson makes it has a cameowood makes it has a cameo it's so and all the cameos

are like really condensed too they all happen like five in a row will happen and then one won't happen for 45 minutes yeah yeah I guess all I have to say is I love this movie and I think it is so goofy and chaotic and let's talk about it let's's do. But first, let's take a quick break and then we will come right back. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job?

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This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, and here is the recap. So, there's a big, scary house. Two boys go inside at

nighttime to take a picture, I guess to show their friends that they, like, went inside the spooky haunted house. But then someone, maybe it's Casper the ghost, I don't know, takes the picture for them and then they run out screaming. It is Casper the ghost. It is. It's his voice.

Oh, God. Caitlin, don't you love the part at the end where 500 wild things happen in a row. People are dying, coming back to life, dying dying coming back to life dying coming back to life surprise kiss surprise angel the the mother doesn't visit her daughter but does visit this ghost like all this stuff happens where you're just like um what a wild night and then and then the ghosts start playing guitars and then the movie's over i just it's uh it's really funny sorry anyway okay we cut to a woman named kerrigan that's kathy moriarty icon she inherits a manor from her deceased father presumably the same old scary house that we just saw which is called what again whip staff manor whip staff manor which

sounds like a place in the valley where they shoot porn yes so the property is condemned it seems nearly worthless but then she and her lawyer dibs played Eric Idle, find something in the paperwork that makes it seem like there might be treasure hidden somewhere in the house. So they travel to the house in Maine. They go inside and meet Casper, who is the same friendly ghost. A friendly ghost. And then sometimes you're like, what do we mean when we say friendly because sometimes he's a pretty calculated ghost sometimes and sometimes he's very creepy and perverted as i mentioned we will be canceling casper on the bechdel cast today uh unfortunately we will no longer be able to watch casper because he's going to be canceled yeah and then he's going to start

touring the right wing circuit it's going to be a disaster um and then he'll say wait we did that yeah we did that that's our job um i i kind of as much as from again there's like just so many bad choices in this movie that i've just like what a confusing thing to have done i guess i'm not bothered by it um because this like movie was also written by like two women but two women who were like voices in the anim i guess i'm not bothered by it um because this like movie was also written by like two women but two women who were like voices in the animaniacs i'm like what is going on like with this movie i don't even care but i carrigan and dibs you get like literally no background other than her father has just died we don't know where dibs came from nope or like what their relationship is i feel like it's implied that they probably fuck and maybe he

wants something more and she doesn't that was always my headcanon okay was that she was you know she's like dibs is always around if i'm horny but obviously he's and then he's like in love with her but then he turns i just love that you get usually i'm like wait we have this like incredible iconic woman playing this villain like let's find out more about her but the way that kerrigan comes off i'm like i don't need it she just wants a treasure and she has a mansion and she's like weirdly okay with dying at any moment like before she's even sure

if the machine works. I just love, just no one makes any sense. Also the way that she is defeated is hilarious, but we will get there. It's so weird. Oh God, the ghost rules in this movie are why doesn't eric idol turn into a ghost that was i was like did they run out of

cgi budget um well because he doesn't die does he or just canonically i guess he just kind of disappears oh yeah i always thought he died wait what does happen with him oh he like falls into a vat no she it's like toward the end and they're bickering over the treasure chest and then she's like you have a flight to catch and then she uses her ghost magic or something to like fling him out of the window and then we just don't see him after that so maybe he did die and becomes a ghost but i guess i always just assumed that he died yeah because he's flung out the it reminded me I wrote down for that actually I did know how he I guess didn't die but I feel like how would he not die you know but yeah um it reminded me

I wrote down reverse I Frankenstein because you know that scene in I Frankenstein where Aaron Eckhart breaks through a window like that for no reason i don't remember but i guess i'll just have to re-watch it look if you have it listeners we know that this is a little chaotic for a main feed episode but we did i frankenstein for my birthday a couple years ago and um yeah there's like a scene where he's going into like the science lab i frankenstein i mean adam adam frankenstein yeah for listeners who haven't seen i frankenstein first of all turn this off you gotta go watch it uh but yeah adam frankenstein played terribly by aaron eckhart he like burst through a window oh and um bill nye the lab is open lab yeah oh i do remember that but it's open because people are like using their key cards and scanning in.

But he just like breaks a window for drama. He was supposed to be sneaking in. Anyways. Casper. So Casper. So Kerrigan and Dibs go to the manor. They meet Casper, who is friendly friendly but they still scream and it wakes up some other ghosts and the place is extra haunted so then kerrigan gets a priest to try to exercise

the ghosts out of the house that doesn't work they get dan akroyd as a ghost buster to bust the ghosts that doesn't work also you know what's fun? Fun Ghost Church moment. Listen to Ghost Church now on iHeartRadio. Dan Aykroyd, I believe his father was into spiritualism. And Dan Aykroyd said specifically when he was working on Ghostbusters, part of his inspiration and motivation for wanting to write and be in Ghostbusters was his dad's interest in spiritualism and the idea of life after death. And so he made, you know, you can listen to our episode on it. We had a lot of thoughts on it.

But that was his interest in the afterlife. Wow. And now he follows like an alien religion or something. Yeah. He likes esoteric religions you know yeah i the more i work on this project the more i'm just like you know what it is like such an amazing thing if you can find a religion that is not perpetual constantly perpetuating harm on other people and if you do find that then like have a great time enjoy yourself yeah you know golden rule it up that's why i founded the cult i mean church of paddington scariest and scariest um i just remembered the the direct to video sequels oh in case there's any other kids that were watching these vhs it

was called casper a spirited beginning and in the christina ricci ish part there was a boy named chris who i was like wow i'm gonna marry chris wonder what happened to him no idea and then the third one was i believe hillary duff's first role. Casper meets Wendy and Hilary Duff plays a young witch who befriends Casper. And then they do, you know, supernatural magical stuff together. Wow. So thank you to the Casper franchise for giving us Hilary Duff. Incredible. I think that she got Lizzie McGuire off of that.

Wow. It's called American history caitlin and and a star is born um thanks god a hillary duff a star is born would be so funny that would be great i would watch it yes okay so dan akroyd being a ghostbuster that doesn't work no kerrigan hires a crew to bulldoze the house that doesn't work and then like the ghosts that they're trying to get rid of are these mean ghosts unlike the friendly ghost that is casper we'll find out that these mean ghosts are are they casper's uncles they are there is they're his abusive uncles yeah so they're mean but also that like doesn't make i i'm sure that because casper started as a comic book character so

i'm assuming this is addressed somewhere in casper canon but you're also like it i maybe they're like his adoptive uncles or something because i don't think that they're like they were his uncles when he was alive it doesn't sound like there were three weird uncles hanging out at this house. Right. Do you like when you become a ghost? Do you like have a ghost chosen family? In which case, why? That would be true.

I don't know because he's just like a kid ghost. So maybe he was looking for. I don't know why I'm overthinking this. He's a kid ghost. So he's kind of lost in the world. You know, he doesn't have a lot of people. And he can't remember his life at first, so they would be his adoptive uncles. Yeah, that's true.

But they're really Cinderella-ing this little perverted young ghost. Yeah, they're really mean in general and mean to Casper. But Casper is friendly, and all he wants is to make a friend yeah then casper sees a news segment on dr james harvey he is a therapist for ghosts okay so this spiritualism wise this is made up in spiritualism you have mediums who connect with spirit and also there's like the whole crossing over concept is interesting as it's presented in this movie because i don't know like it's it's kind of like all over the place where it's like oh you have unfinished business and that if you have unfinished business you go to heaven like christian heaven question mark like

where did kathy moriarty go we don't really know hell i you would think but like i it's it's hard to say how this movie feels about uh redemptive justice in the afterlife i don't know if they were thinking about it when they wrote it but i just thought it was because spiritualism is mostly like they don't believe that like spirits remaining on earth is purgatory they're like that's kind of par for the course where you'll like remain like when you die you become a spirit guide to the people in your life but then you can cross over to this place called the summer land it's kind of all over the place it depends on

who you ask they're really disorganized like the plot of casper like the plot of casper right so dr james harvey is a psychiatrist who after the death of his wife his wife his gorgeous wife with perfect hair geez he started to treat ghosts and help them resolve their unfinished business. And then Kerrigan also sees this broadcast because Casper goes into her hotel room and puts it on her TV because Casper saw Dr. Harvey's daughter, Cat, and really takes a liking to her and wants to be her friend again weird as hell like the first thing where you're like now casper that's enough you know like that because i kind of forgot that that was his motivation same i i think more logically assumed that i was like oh he saw that like her dad could help him cross over right i i just felt like writing wise that would be a more logical thing

and then like he meets her and they become friends and so then it just happens anyways like why give him a weird pervy motivation when the thing that's on tv also like should be like more motivating for him right because he sees dr harvey being able to like connect with and help ghosts and that piques his interest but it's not until he sees cat christina rucci and he's like hubba hubba i need her in my life oh my gosh i'm love. And then he like sets up a weird, like manipulative scheme to lure Kat and her father into his house so that he can get with Kat.

And that's, yeah, it's so creepy. I was kind of curious. I was like, I wonder if that like changed at some point because it just like didn't seem logical. Like this feels like, I wonder if that like changed at some point because it just like didn't seem logical. Like this feels like I feel like the reverse note would be given now where it's like, don't force a weird love story on this like 12 or 13 year old girl. But I feel like in the 90s, it was maybe the opposite where they're like, no, we got to get a love story going here. Because it just like, I don't know. It just doesn't scan for me that it's like, oh, the little ghost is horny. And he's just going to ignore this really valuable whatever.

Bill Pullman. Hot. That's the takeaway. That's my defense of every bad choice in this movie. I'm just like, Bill Pullman is the way he wears those weird pants. He's really looking like a dad in the 90s. So we cut to him. We cut to Dr. James Harvey, played by Bill Pullman, and his daughter, Kat, played by Christina Ricci.

They are driving to this manor in Maine. Now, Kat doesn't believe in ghosts and she thinks her dad is a loser and a joke and she's resentful that he moves her around the country all the time and sometimes you're and you're like uh is she like really wrong I think re-watching it this time I'm like he's really not a very good parent at all so at the end when his dead wife comes back his wife returns and is like you're actually an awesome parent i'm like oh i mean i'm glad he didn't die but i wouldn't say that he's a good parent right where is like he's not even there with his daughter for half of the movie he goes to a bar and hangs out with

mean ghosts for like a long time that was so wild to me i never like because i've never watched this movie with anything but like a nostalgic like lens and this was like embarrassingly one of those things where i'm like i definitely didn't this is the first time i ever heard like jailhouse rock or like an elvis song would have been like in this movie but yeah it's the night of his daughter's big party and he's like gone at a bar like really fucked up and i'm like i get that the ghosts like kidnapped him and brought him to a bar but they didn't make him get wasted blackout drunk and walk off a cliff also they were gonna shoot him in the head i was just like yeah this movie is so funny like what are you doing it actually really like once i found out the writers write for animaniacs i'm like yeah this is a fucking

like weird cartoon yeah oh i loved animaniacs the best anyway okay so her whole thing is that she doesn't like that they have to move around all the time because she just wants to stay in one place long enough to make a friend. And we're like, oh my gosh, that's what Cat. Casper also wants to make a friend. Wow. So Dr. Harvey and Cat arrive at the manor. Kerrigan is there and she's like you better figure this out really quickly Dr. Harvey and he's like it's gonna take as much time as it takes honey so he and Kat

move into the house which is wild that they do that oh yeah I'm also like what why does she switch school systems if they're only supposed to be there for two weeks yeah we don't know look look away look away don't ask questions matter nothing makes sense they should have turned they should have turned the get ready machine into a roller coaster i will never not be mad that someone didn't turn that into a roller coaster that was clearly made to be turned into a roller coaster are you kidding me seriously oh anyway so they explore the they explore the house it's big it's kooky it's spooky and casper is so excited that cat is there and then cat sees casper she freaks out she's never seen a ghost before and then dr harvey sees him too he also freaks out and everyone's like oh my god there are ghosts his reaction defies logic why doesn't he came here to see ghosts the second his daughter's like i saw ghosts

you would think he would be thrilled because she doesn't believe in ghosts but or her father and then instead the second he gets the information he's like i don't believe you and i'm scared i'm like what's wrong with you he's such a bad dad he's like not a bad person clearly okay this was my horrible twitter joke oh please i texted it to you i don't even want to say it out loud it's such a bad format men would rather go to the whipstaff manor and hang out and get and walk off a cliff with three scary ghosts than go to therapy it's true though it's true you're not wrong he's i i empathize with him he's having a hard time with the death of his wife but a lot of his parenting decisions are just

egregiously bad parenting decisions this just doesn't make sense this i don't understand why he reacts this way well because he's also bad at his job because he's really bad at his job he goes and tries to give therapy to the three mean ghosts and like no breakthroughs happen like he well they have they have breakthroughs via they become friends but like which is also inappropriate you're not supposed to befriend your psychiatry clients look my therapist gives me a ride home sometimes don't worry it's fine uh doesn't mean that you can't make some breakthroughs with someone who's willing to give you a ride home but do you go out and get blackout drunk with your therapist no that see that's the thing like he's not good at his job it's unclear

to me they make it sound in the news report like he has successfully done this before but clearly that's not true and also when he meets the like i do think he successfully becomes friends with the uncles but that doesn't mean that he's a good therapist like that correct is you're right that's unprofessional i've just been excusing this man also the first time that he meets them he's like i'm your therapist and then he immediately sucks them into a vacuum and i'm like that's also that's a little problematic uh i wouldn't let my therapist suck me what are we talking about at this point also well i'll just wait till we get to this plot point but then another wild thing happens okay so casper's uncles show up after the kind of initial shock wears off of like dr harvey and cat seeing casper so the uncles show up after the kind of initial shock wears off of like dr harvey and cat seeing casper

so the uncles show up who are stretch fatso and stinky and then dr harvey tries to make contact with them but again they're mean and they play a bunch of pranks on him he battles them for a while and then he sucks them into a vacuum cleaner they're big time pranksters huge goofs who the hell were they when they were alive the impractical jokers that made me laugh that much they were there that's actually the cast of it's always sunny in philadelphia oh wow and they didn't realize and maybe that's or that's the prequel to Everybody Loves Raymond because Brad Garrett is one of the. OK, true. But also you're like, surely those were not their names in real life.

They just seem to be like and maybe I'm sure a lot of this is comic stuff. But the three uncles, the way they're characterized, the way they behave, the way they're named, the way they're characterized the way they behave the way they're named the way they look it just seems like they there's a separate set of rules for them then yes for casper and for all the other ghosts they're just kind of doing their own thing the world building right i like i like that they're the impractical jokers they joked too hard they're the cast of jackass johnny moxville and steve-o and oh my gosh yes okay so the next morning kat and casper get to know each other a little better he makes her breakfast via another breakfast machine although this one is weak there's only like a thing that cracks the egg and puts it in a skillet but the rest he kind of has to do himself but it's not awesome it's so we were trying to remember when we first started talking

about the breakfast rube goldberg machine the ones that always come to mind peewee i feel like has the best one but wallace and gromit also have one and casper has one casper has one a lot of people pointed out one that we missed which was chitty chitty bang bang i haven't seen that damn oh it was wait was it flubber flubber had a breakfast machine it's anytime there's a a kooky inventor you've gotta have a breakfast machine and i like that rule right because back to the future also has a breakfast machine. Yes. And if you count marmalade as breakfast food, which for Paddington, every meal is marmalade. There's a marmalade breakfast machine at the beginning of Paddington 1. So lots of breakfast machines in this movie. Add it to the list.

Yeah. I would say it's a low-ranking breakfast machine. But it makes sense because Casper's dad was a kooky inventor. Right? Yes. Okay. So Casper's making cat breakfast, but then the uncles come back. And they again, like you mentioned, they kind of have Cinderella Casper, they make him do all of their chores and cooking and cleaning and all that stuff and dr harvey wants to treat the uncles and help them resolve their unfinished business and cross over into whatever plane he also doesn't have much of a vested interest in helping casper which is unclear to me because you would think that casper would maybe be priority one he's a kid well if he's

being treated very poorly i mean maybe it's the airplane rules you got to take care of the worst one and then you can take care of the kid after take care of yourself right um well okay let's examine this the reason okay that dr harvey is even in the movie is because he needs to get rid of the ghosts so that kerrigan can go into the house and find the treasure but right the ghosts aren't causing that much of a problem that why can't she just no i feel like they would have killed her i i feel like they with the rules of this movie they would have killed her i understand why she's not comfortable going into the house yeah but like it seems like at the beginning and i feel like this would have been a strong character twist if she was just extremely

afraid of death but that's not true she's like not afraid of death at all she can't wait to die so that she can go through walls and find a treasure chest that has a baseball glove in it such weird logic where she's like wait a second if i died right now i could walk through this wall and then i could find the treasure i'm like you could also just like you were happy with bulldozing the house you could just get an axe right and hack open the wall but not my business nothing makes sense not my clowns not my circus okay meanwhile kat goes to her new school where she meets vick this boy who she thinks is cute the most 90s looking boy you've ever seen in your life

just a swoop just a blonde swoop and we also meet vick's girlfriend who i never figured out her name oh mrs generic bully miss in this world there can only be one girl in every class and she's mean she's a she's a like a rich mean girl casper follows cat to school just in case you weren't sure if he was creepy yet or not then there's this announcement about a halloween dance that they can't have in the school gym because of asbestos removal so also what i was like they shouldn't be at the school. Right. They all like suddenly die like 15 years after this movie comes out. The whole everyone who went to that school and then it becomes like a big true crime thing. Oh, yeah. But they'll just turn into ghosts.

That's actually that's true. And just fly around as ghosts. Why is it? And I also in as far as this movie franchise was willing to go in terms of just like body horror and sad things happening, it's not off the table. A whole school dying of asbestos poisoning actually seems like it would fit right in. Casper 4, anyone? Let's start working on it. Let's start working on it.

Let's get Kathy Moriarty back. Hell yeah. Love her. Yes. Let's get Christina Ricciiarty back hell yeah love her yes get christina ricci back she's the only survivor she comes back it's a haunted school of all of her childhood bullies yeah because she was only in the school for two weeks and then she made it out i'm like are they gonna live there now right do they just because because kerrigan ands died, that doesn't mean that they get the house. That just goes to somebody else.

Right. Or it gets repossessed. It doesn't entitle the ghost therapist to a mansion. What are you talking about? We simply don't know. To quote him, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Yeah. Which means he can't have that house.

He does not possess the house. He doesn't okay the halloween dance is coming up and then cat's classmates find out what house she lives in this big spooky manor and they're like let's have the halloween dance there and the teacher is like yeah sounds good to me baffling but that i'm like maybe that is how maybe maybe schools were that lax in the 90s 25 years ago where they were like he was like yeah great cool have a great time i was like is he is he there i forget he does he does come to chaperone yeah he goes well that's good but it's also like but i also love how they like don't ask anyone's permission because it's not her house. Right.

She shouldn't be throwing a party at Kerrigan's house. Yeah. They're squatting in the house and then they're like, but also let's have a party. And he's fine with it. And then they have one of the more bizarre father daughter conversations ever committed to film. This movie is just so weird it is okay so back at the house the uncles mention that they've seen dr harvey's what his wife which again amelia baffling she's an angel why is she visiting their ghosts the impractical jokers she loved the show um and dr harvey's whole thing is that he desperately

wants to see his wife right because he's got unfinished business even though he's alive so they strike up oh so this is the wild thing that the other extremely unprofessional thing that he does as a psychiatrist where even though he's supposed to be giving psyche like you know whatever like psychiatric evaluations giving therapy to these ghosts trying to you know help them heal he's like well you know what let's make this about me during our first session and can you go find my wife for me wild to be fair he says i shouldn't be doing this and then he's like but let me just like immediately like he's already doing so he's already sucked his clients into a vacuum and so he's like at this point i might as well just do

a bad job yeah yeah i've already been nothing but unprofessional. Yep. So they strike up a deal. If Dr. Harvey can keep Kerrigan off of the ghost uncle's backs, they will help bring Amelia's ghost or, you know, spiritual presence to see Dr. Harvey. Right. And so he's like, okay, great. But then they just end up playing

another prank on him so again i'm just like wow they're so mean so mean why would they do that speaking of mean people the mean girlfriend of that kid vick yeah she has vick pretend to ask Kat to like hang out at the dance. Like he would be Kat's date at the dance. And Kat is super excited. And she says yes. But Casper wants to go to the dance with Kat. But she's like, no, I already have a date. And also you're a ghost.

And then there's a handful of scenes where we will just have to like unpack those later because casper is being really creepy and pushy but it's played off as being cute but they're like we love this um yeah that is uh just i mean that whole like this whole kind of sequence where like the way casper treats cat and then how like weirdly negligent her dad is you're just like we gotta get this kid out of here we gotta get her out of maine yeah you know she i hope that you know she's got like an you know some aunts or uncles that she could talk to because her dad is just a mess oh yeah her her uncle's uh fat so stinky and stretch oh god they're it's just not oh it made me it bummed me out so much the scene where it's like i knew what

they were going for but it just like felt so bizarre where kat like asks her dad she's like hey could i have like or maybe she doesn't she's like we're going to have a party here at this place we don't live we never see the scene where she asks if that dance can happen at the house right and which you would think wouldn't be allowed but anyways she the scene starts as if they've already agreed on it and she's like i want to wear something nice like date nice and right which is like she's like 12 or 13 that's like not unreasonable sure coming of age i get it but the way he reacts is so bizarre where he like immediately was like oh i should give you the sex talk and she's like no that's okay

and he's like why are like he basically implies like why are you having sex i'm like yeah dude she's 12 why are you acting like this yeah and then she's but then she's sort of like haha no no what is going on why is she not like ew what yeah it is his inability to connect with his daughter is staggering especially because he's a mental health professional there are okay now this every performance in this movie is camp and i would say the two bill palman and kathy moriarty are tied for me for campiest performances of the movie i think christina ricci actually kind of keeps it pretty grounded yeah but sometimes like bill palman is acting so cartoonishly weird in a way that like

it's kind of confusing given what his part is where sometimes he's like yeah whatever and you're like i don't he you're supposed to be a grieving single father like his performance makes no sense i get why kathy moriarty and er Idles that makes sense performances that makes total sense they're basically home alone villains like right yeah that works but yeah Bill Pullman being like especially when he like why he's acting weird he gets drunk and then makes out with all three of the ghost uncles and then falls off of a cliff and stinky says homo, but the other two are kind of loving it. This movie is so weird. It's wild.

Okay. So that was the creepiest scene to me was him asking his 12-year-old if she's had sex before. You're just like, yeah. Don't know why that was. Get this kid to a guidance counselor. Truly. Okay, so we just saw the scene where Casper was being extra creepy to Kat. Then Kat finds a bunch of Casper's old, like, toys and things. She sets them up to help him remember stuff about his past,

which he was having trouble remembering. And then I was like was like wow spirited away parallels much because it's it's a young girl and a spirit boy and she helps him remember his past i really love that scene where casper is like my train i don't know it's cute she does like that i wish that this movie would have just been like, or I guess the year 1995 in general would have like just been okay with this being a friendship because that angle is really cute. And like, she does this very sweet friendship gesture and then it like moves the

platform forward in a very logical way. And it's like, yeah, they don't need to kiss. He's a fucking computer ghost. Anyways, until he's Devon Sawa, we'll get there oh my god confusing i don't get the devin sawa appeal and i never have and i never will i am just so youthful that i don't really know why i'm supposed to care about devon sala yeah because i'm 17 jamie yeah happy birthday

thank you i can't wait to uh buy cigarettes with you oh cool cool oh okay so she's so cat is helping casper remember who he used to be then it's the night of the party casper finds a dress for cat to wear and then casper's like by the way i remember how i died and here's what it was i couldn't tell was that his mother's wedding dress or was that just like an old dress oh i really i'm not sure they don't explicitly say it's her wedding dress i don't think so but it looks like a wedding dress yeah i don't know um so then cat finds a newspaper clipping about casper's dad who claimed to be haunted by the ghost of his dead son then he invented a machine to bring his son back to life and casper's like oh yeah the lazarus this is cool so he remembers where it is it's in the house like in

the basement or something so he leads Kat to this machine there's a whole like literal roller coaster conveyor belt thing that it takes you into this like phantom of the opera style basement laboratory it is awesome this whole like sequence really just makes me so happy. I love it. Yeah, it's very cool. Meanwhile, Kerrigan and Dibs are snooping around the house and they follow Kat and Casper to the lab. And then Casper goes into the Lazarus machine to be brought back to life. Kat fires up the machine, but then Kerrigan sneaks in and steals the red plot liquid that powers the machine before casper can be brought back to life say it's plot liquid too like she's like what's this he's like it's kind of this juice that brings you back to life there's only one yeah anyways

and we're like okay i guess this is the world building. Good job, everybody. I love it. So then Kerrigan's logic is she will kill Dibs. He will turn into a ghost and be able to float through the walls to find the treasure they're looking for. And then she can use this red ghost liquid to bring him back to life. But as she's trying to kill him, she accidentally kills herself by falling off of a cliff. And then she comes back as a ghost. You see her fall off the cliff, too.

It's exactly what I did. I did think it was funny that they're like, OK, we can watch Kathy Moriarty fall off a cliff because she's the bad guy. But Bill Pullman's a good guy who also ostensibly falls off a cliff or like he falls off like a balcony he yeah he he dies from a fall but you can't we can't see bill pullman fall right even though i think you know sometimes i'm like i like kathy moriarty much more than bill pullman bill pullman's walking around thinking he's a good person well he's not a very good dad true but he's so hot okay so she comes back as a ghost meanwhile the ghost uncles are trying to kill dr harvey at a karaoke night at a bar while they're all blackout drunk but dr harvey again is too drunk to notice that they're trying to like murder

him with guns and crowbars and stuff and he's like i love you guys you're my best friends and then he falls off a balcony and dies then back at the manor kerrigan as a ghost has found the treasure we don't see the scene where she figures out where it was or anything like that but she comes back with a treasure chest and casper and cat steal the red liquid back from her and then trick her into admitting that she doesn't have any unfinished business so she crosses over and like ceases to be a ghost right and disappears and leaves the red plot liquid and the treasure behind also i've skipped the part where she kills eric idol but she just sends him through a window i thought we were gonna get an eric idol ghost i always am waiting for it to show up it never does

i was wondering because i was thinking of ghostbusters with this due to cgi ghosts right and one of the things we talked about about the first ghostbusters with this due to cgi ghosts right and one of the things we talked about about the first ghostbusters movie is that male coded ghosts can look like anything like and this is just a general animation problem but women ghosts can only look like conventionally hot women that you can see through right i don't know that this it's hard to say again like this movie is kind of lawless in that regard because it just seems like casper and the uncles are all obviously like male code of ghosts yeah and they look weird but then it's like if you were already a famous actor you'll just look like that famous actor as a ghost in a way that felt because originally when kerrigan came

back i'm like oh this is ghostbusters rules but then you're like no bill pullman's ghost looks exactly like bill pullman i wonder if when you become a ghost right at first like right after you die you more closely resemble what you looked like in life but then the longer you're a ghost the more cartoonish you you start to look oh as i kind of like that as you like lose touch with your past and yourself you kind of just turn into this like a blob blobby cartoon character yeah canon i like it thank you okay they kill carrigan they make her like cross back over and the treasure chest opens and it turns out to be a baseball and glove because those were casper's treasures when he was alive and that was the mcguffin basically just

his there's like 12 mcguffin you're just like sure okay which is like that's whatever cute fine yeah this at this point so many things you just are like, Kat is never going to recover from this night. This night is so traumatic for her. And when she finds out that her mom returned as an angel and didn't even say hi, I don't know what she's going to do. That's a problem I've had since I was a kid I was like if my mom passed away came back as an angel and only talked to my dad and Casper the friendly ghost when I was right there I would be so pissed that did not even occur to me until you said that but that's fucked up not very angelic behavior if you ask me no okay so meanwhile while all this is happening cat's class has shown up for the halloween party and that's happening upstairs uh and then

dr harvey's ghost because cat's dad has bill pullman has become a ghost after falling off of the balcony when he was blackout drunk he shows up doesn't remember who cat is at first but then he's like oh yeah i forgot again you're just like oh there's just tonal another moment of tonal dissonance with the bill pullman performance where she's so sad like obviously she just found out her father died she's an orphan and he is like man like yeah pull my finger like he doesn't remember her which also doesn't track with like the ghost rules because kathy moriarty ghost remembers everything about what's been going on when she was still alive she hasn't like suddenly forgotten there's no rules anything about who she is or what she's trying to do but bill pullman there are no rules eric idel doesn't even get to be a ghost

i don't know why they ran i truly like they ran out of ghost budget maybe they're like we can only make six we're budgeted for six ghosts and we can't make a single ghost more this did have a budget of 55 million dollars that's a lot of dollars in 1995 especially a hell of a lot but this movie made so much money i mean every kid on the planet saw this damn movie it's true and it's and it's a good thing they did because it's because it teaches you good lessons yeah like that you should stock your romantic interest from a young age stock christina ritchie start young i meant more to get drunk with ghosts and okay yeah be negligent that was there's so many bad things you could take away from this movie but i just feel like it moves so fast and it's so confusing it's uh i wonder if anyone was able to take anything away from this movie other than what the what what what am I looking at?

Yeah, good. Good point. Thank you. Okay, so Dr. Harvey's ghost is back and then Casper sacrifices his chance of being brought back to life so that they can use the Lazarus machine and the red plot liquid to bring Dr. Harvey back to life which they do kind of beautiful such a beautiful sacrifice if only the stakes hadn't been established one minute previous to this happening exactly it happens so like it is a very noble sacrifice but it is like everything happens inside. Like that whole loop is closed inside five minutes.

Yeah, it's so bizarre. So then Kat goes back upstairs to the Halloween party. Meanwhile, Casper is in his room. He's all sad that he can't go to the party. But then Kat's mom slash Dr. Harvey's his wife, Amelia Amelia shows up as an angel and turns Casper into a human boy which will last until 10 p.m. yeah so he goes to the dance and he's Devin Sawa and he dances with Kat and then they float and then he says can I keep you for the second time and you're like and you're like nope it's not better in person it's it's

weird whether it's a cartoon or a or a fleshy as they put it right and so they're dancing and and then we're like i guess and then amelia visits dr harvey and she's like she basically says i'm dead you have to stop looking for me. Get over it. See you when I see you. My mom would always cry when she would give the advice. Because it is cute. It's a little cute specifics.

But when you think about how many things he's doing wrong as a parent, definitely not the top three recommendations I would have made. I would have been like, try not to get blackout drunk the night you're supposed to be chaperoning your daughter's party try not to squat in houses you don't own which unless it's absolutely necessary which it doesn't seem like it is in this case don't make your daughter switch school systems once every for two weeks yeah because what she actually says is don't feed cat french fries for breakfast and it's like yeah he's doing way worse stuff than that yeah i was like he's doing that too oh my god you don't even see that i i take it back you you should squat in places you don't own because property ownership is is one of the greatest scams perpetuated of all time but he's just doing so much wrong yeah he's doing so much wrong yeah exactly so amelia i mean she says it nicer than that but she's just like you loved me so much

that i don't have any unfinished business so you can stop looking for me you did a great job she's dating stinky she's like it's not time she's like just keep doing a great job parenting and we're like he's not though and then we cut back to cat and devin saw on the dance floor they kiss and then the clock strikes 10 so he turns back into casper and all the kids are like oh my god my God, there's a ghost. And they run away. And then the uncles, who I guess are nice now, strike up their rock band. They literally, the plot indicates that when Bill Pullman kisses them, they become nice. That is the turning point. Yeah. They are bad. They're pointing a gun at his head 10 seconds before.

And then he kisses them and they become nice. Fine by me. Kiss your friends. That's the takeaway. Exactly. To quote one of the greats. Assuming they consent to it. Yeah.

All right. So that's the movie. Let's take a break and we'll come back. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career,

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I think we covered a lot of this in text. Yes. But I mean, one of the first big, I mean, there's a lot of broad 90s tropes. And it's just like late 20th century movie tropes that are present in this movie that, I mean, one that stood out that we haven't touched on yet is the character of Fatso who is um i mean that's just used clearly as a punching down joke in a movie constantly no body diversity otherwise right there's a ton of like references made in this movie one of which is like making fun of oprah's weight which is i can't think of a more 1995 problematic thing to do get a life um yeah that so I mean that character in general was just like a joke bucket for offensive jokes all of which have aged poorly especially when yeah there's no body diversity or really uh diversity at all in this movie I think that there's like really not two black actors with

speaking roles there's like a teacher and a student but other than that it's like they're on screen for like hardly any time at all yeah it's like i know this movie canonically happens in maine but it's a fucking movie and there's non-white people who live in Maine and very 90s. And then there's what we've been talking about this whole time, which is the creepy stalker relationship that is like not necessary. And if you get it out of the way, it could have been a really nice friendship story. Could have just been a friendship again. And one, like you pointed out, Casper doesn't need to lure them in. Like that could have happened more organically where like Kerrigan just finds out about Dr. Harvey on her own. She hires them.

They come to the house and then Casper and Kat meet from that and then they just become friends. But instead it's like this weird, and we talk about all the time on the show these like coercive stalkery romances that start by usually a man just being really creepy at a woman and maybe she pushes back at first but eventually it ends up working and she'll kiss him by the end of the movie and for that to be in a kid's movie where the characters are 12 it is just like feels especially sinister it's such a bummer and it's like i i again the only thing i can say is there's so much chaos in this movie that it's not something that i don't think i internalized it in this movie specifically as a kid but I also do remember that like can I keep you line was supposed to be like very romantic

and you're like pretty pretty scary delivered in any in any form of Casper it doesn't age great and yeah just like I mean any like I feel like any movie or most movies of this era will shoehorn in a love story for kids in a way that yeah like if you're that age watching the movie like it's just weird it's not necessary and even story-wise it like actively detracts from what you would want like casper's whole motivation as a character is he wants a friend like not right a girlfriend not like a human girl to kiss it's very bizarre like and it's and it feels like yeah that's why i'm sort of like i wonder if that was like a weird studio notes thing because it feels like every character in this movie needs a friend to some extent

because you see that in the in the dad character he befriends the uncles the uncles befriend him and then they both theoretically become better for having friends yeah they're also making out with each other you know i don't know i don't know what's going on there i guess we don't know judgment address it in the sequels bill palman was not available to make out with ghosts anymore um but it was like oh you know through making friends you're able to like move forward through life and like move past your own grief is like as close to like a moral as I could sort of get from this story. So you would think that like, yeah, like Bill Pullman doesn't fall in love with anybody. Yeah, it just feels very forced and ages poorly and also like didn't really work at the time either. Don't like it right but I think that no one this concept of just like a boy or man being creepy and

coercive and getting a girl that way had already been so normalized and then like right so like if I'm watching this as a kid and I'm like oh wow I guess that's what romance looks like and then you're just like indoctrinated into this mindset at an early age and then you watch a movie like the notebook 10 years later or whatever and you're like well yeah movies like casper taught me that this is how it is this is how romance goes so i just like i think it's so sinister that i just kind of like want to briefly go through the beats of this because we touched on some of them already but then there's that scene that we i skipped over in the recap that is like especially gross please so casper sees cat on that like new segment he instantly falls in love with her doesn't really make sense again you think he would be intrigued by the idea that there's this ghost therapist who

can like help him cross over and deal with his unfinished business and like that would make more sense in the narrative of like what's motivating him but instead he's like oh Christina Ricci is a person I've never met but I love her because I saw her on tv so he then manipulates Kerrigan into hiring Dr. Harvey so that Kat will come. So again, he just like lures Kat there for his own selfish reasons. Then there's that scene where he keeps telling her that he wants to go to the dance with her. She says, no, I already have a date. He keeps being very pushy.

He's like, well, what does he have that I don't have yeah he's like if I was alive would you if I was this if I was that yeah she keeps saying like no no no I already told you I have a date then he turns into like Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator this reminded me of Twilight a lot weirdly because it's like a guy who's been dead for a long time and so like that like because you know how like edward colin's like i'm a million years old i'm you know i'm an old man and you're a teenager and you're my girlfriend casper's been dead for a long time they both suddenly seize the object of their obsession and uh whisk them out a window yeah and then that is what motivates

the female character to fall in love with them right yeah there's a lot of yeah a lot of parallels in twilight he's like okay spider monkey let's run around and she's like teehee okay in casper he pulls her out the window drops her then so many balcony falls in this movie right oh my god he saves her she's still screaming and then we immediately cut to a scene where they're sitting on a lighthouse and she's swooning she's saying oh my god this view is beautiful and then he goes on to like tell her about oh i can't remember my past and i don't know who i was so like i feel like he's just like using all this emotional manipulation and then also just like straight up creepy coercive stuff to i agree that he's using creepy coercive stalker behavior

when it gets to like the stuff if he doesn't remember his past i didn't even i didn't clock that as emotional manipulation i just kind of clocked that as like not very good writing i wouldn't if he hadn't already done all that other stuff but then i feel like that could be you could interpret that as like well now it definitely could be interpreted that way like you know i have her in my clutches and this kind of seals the deal to get her to like me and to like care about me. Which is a bummer because again, it's like if it had just been presented as a friendship and they meet more by chance, you could have that exact same scene and it could play very, very differently. It could work just fine. Exactly. Yeah. like saying actually like is is you know thoughtful and empathetic and they're like sharing experiences about like she has lost a parent and like she's talking a little bit about that and you know that's

a big part of her character and it's like just let them connect on that level because yeah like you're talking about because all that stuff happens before it adds this like layer of baggage and like weird coercive stuff that doesn't need to be there and you yeah i feel like that scene could play out you know they could just be up on the lighthouse together without you know i don't know like right because he's already manipulated several people and been super creepy yeah i just i was like i feel like he's just i don't know like he i see what you're saying yeah yeah um so they have that conversation and then they go back to the house he's like i don't know tucking her into bed or something but she's like kind of drifting off to sleep and he whispers

in her ear can i keep you she is like as pretty asleep by this point and then he kisses her on the cheek when she is not conscious she thinks it's like a draft coming in she's like close the window but he's like kissing her and being like can i keep you yeah that stuff is yucky gross and then at the end when he's a human devon sawa and they're dancing it also doesn't work and you're like oh why are we doing this and he says can i keep you again and then she's like wait who is this right because she also doesn't even know that's casper at first devin sawa just comes up to her and takes her hand and like leads her onto the dance floor and she's like huh and then when he says like can i keep you is that the moment when she's like wait are you casper there's something that like she doesn't know i mean that i didn't view as like coercive i just

thought that was weird because it's like she doesn't know anyone in at this school really so it's like if she saw a boy she wanted to dance with like probably she wouldn't have known him anyways and it's like not like she's being like dragged on like she's going like she's going but it's just like another weird writing moment we were like oh yeah she has no idea who this is this is she as far as she knows this is just like a boy from her school i feel like you needed coming to this party at her house that is not her house i feel like someone else's house right i feel like you needed to this party at her house that is not her house. I feel like someone else's. Right. I feel like you needed something similar to that moment in Beauty and the Beast where Beast turns into a human.

And Belle is looking at him skeptically. And then she looks deep into his eyes. She's like, you have the same eyes as Beast. And then she's like, it is you. And he's like, teehee. I feel like we needed a moment like that right away right because otherwise you're like what is what is it's hard to put yourself in Kat's head for this scene because it's like why is she looking all googly-eyed if she'd like if she doesn't even know it's Casper right right I like look it not. I love that this movie was written by women, two credited writers, Sherry Stoner and Deanna Oliver, both of whom are also actors and have been in really famous cartoons.

Deanna Oliver is in The Brave Little Toaster and wrote on Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures. Sherry Stoner was the voice of slappy on animaniacs and they also wrote a movie that i definitely saw in theaters and couldn't tell you a single thing that happens in it my favorite martian remember that i know of it they also wrote that sherry stoner this is bizarre speaking of beauty and the beast um she was an animation reference model for ariel and bell oh my they're just kind of iconic figures and they wrote casper like i love it but there's just a lot of things that happen in this movie that make no sense truly yeah i mean it is unusual for women to write like major motion pictures in the 90s right i know i mean i think it's a really good thing

and i fully i want to believe that a lot of the weird romantic stuff is being pushed from a studio standpoint studio also i read that jj abrams did an uncredited rewrite of the script so maybe some of the weirdness came from his rewrite we don't know hard to track let's blame him why not let's blame jj abrams we could blame him for a lot of things true we yeah so i mean the thing that sucks about that is i really like cat as a character like i think that if that relationship with her and casper had been stripped down to a friendship it would have done justice to her character so much better because it's like she's she's a christina ricci character and at this point christ Christina Ricci has already been Wednesday Addams. She's sort of like she's going to be in the ghost movies for a while.

Spooky, big, you know, haunted mansion movies. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like she's, I don't know, like maybe I just like have such nostalgia for this character. But like she is like grieving her mother. She's struggling to fit in at school she like has a tough relationship with her father because she like understandably resents him for like dragging her around the country because he won't go to therapy like right all of this like

there's a lot going on and like she still manages to be like very motivated uh she's empathetic to the people around her but like not at the sacrifice of her own story like i do think that there's a lot of cool things about that character that like if you had taken out the weird predatory relationship stuff that's being pushed on a 12 year old you could have made some space for like even more coming of age stuff um that would have been cool because i like i like the coming of age stuff that's there but it's kind of stripped down to like she makes a friend but also he's kind of her boyfriend and like it's like no she should make a friend i would have loved to see her make a friend at school i would have loved to see her have a conversation with her angel mom like

it just felt like there are a lot of missed opportunities yeah um she's pretty active in the like I mean the whole climax of the movie again I'm just like I don't even know if I can get to gender on it because it's just such a weird mess yeah um but like she's pretty active in that climactic scene but like also everyone's kind of doing their own thing in that scene like i just i think kat is an awesome character yeah and i wish that the main thrust of the story wasn't her ending up with sort of a ghost boyfriend although it seems like the second he turns back into a ghost that is off the table so you're just like why did we even do it then right like she only wants to kiss him when he's devin sawa and also that was you know a surprise kiss and blah blah blah like all this shit that we've been talking about for years but it's just it it sucks that the takeaways from her character

is she forgives her father's bad parenting and she has like a ghost boyfriend when the basis of the character there's like potential for so much more i like that i wish that she had had she'd been given more cool stuff to do yes i think there could have been a more meaningful subplot and resolution between her and her father i think there could have been a more meaningful subplot about how she's experiencing the loss of her mother and you know like how she's dealing with that grief and again if she had some closure there like if her mom angel came and talked to her then it could have also passed the bechdel test snubbed by her mom so weird but so much real estate in the movie is taken up by this creepy

predatory romance between 12 year olds it's so bizarre i did find there to be traces of the precocious 12 year old girl trope with Kat. It's not the worst example I've ever seen. But I felt like you could make the argument that there are traces of it. But in a way that would you argue in a way that's like harmful? Because it's not even like she's a bookish kid like i think she's just like lonely and right and i think has some good lines i think she is well-rounded enough and just like a multi-dimensional enough character that yeah other aspects of her character that she doesn't necessarily fall into that trope super squarely but i don't maybe it was just maybe it was just the scene where they're like turning on the power in the house when they first

get there and she's like yeah we need all these 20 volt bulbs or like i don't know she says something she like knows all about electricity and i'm like why do you hate casper they're they're it's like definitely no it's definitely like a quippy script like yeah i just threw something it's definitely like a quick a quippy script but it's i think it's like i think that's more just like that's how everyone sounds in this movie and she and casper are the only kids that you really get to know because it's like the bullies are like have these weird quippy lines too and they're like making references that are kind of out of pocket given they're like you know she's like she you know she knows who Stephen

King is but that's just because the script wants to reference the fact that they're in Maine like I don't know I she definitely is like precocious but I don't I mean it's not I think in a way that was like bad yeah I'd agree that's not even that's not even always a universally bad trope i think it's just like a trope that exists sometimes it sucks and is like problematic but i feel like it only for me it's mainly an issue if it implies that a kid is like worldly in a way that is permissive for adults to treat them not like a kid right but i don't think that that's really what's happening here i think she just is yeah like i agree with you um i didn't have much else except for it also feels a bit tropey to me that like a dad or man's motivation

is his dead wife i'm'm like, for sure. Well, yeah, I had a little bit about the mom too. I think that like that whole thing is like a little like, do we know what the mom did? No, we don't know if she had a job.

But her daughter's memories are of her cooking breakfast and smelling good and being, and it's not to say like they're like, if she didn't have a job or like any of that that would make her less of a mother it just is like right in terms of trope like she remembers her mom doing only very like feminine domestic things we don't really get any background on the mom in a way that actually kind of does feel egregious like it doesn't with kerrigan because kerrigan is like straight up a cartoon character as is dibs but like the mom we're supposed to really

be feeling this loss and the things that you know about her are very vague and i feel like the the whole concept of like the angelic mother character you're like all right i get like it's just kind of in a way that a lot of stuff in this movie is kind of like stocky and lazy yeah i don't know like movies and culture in general like i do think that there is like this obviously like nothing but respect for mothers braver than the troops it's it's hard to be like oh but i just feel like there's a there's this creepy halo given to the concept of motherhood in movies that i feel like is also like on the back end of that used to demonize childless women or like the best a woman can be is if she is a mother um and you can kind of see that in and i

don't know how intentional this was if at all but like you know like the dead mom is an angel and kerrigan is like a childless woman in her 30s and she's hell and she's evil and she's a horny murderer and blah blah blah when you know so the the mom stuff i just thought was it again it sucks because i i like the actor who plays the mom i think she's like great but yeah if you're gonna do all that at least have the mom talk to her daughter like what are you doing um yeah so the the mom stuff kind of pinged a little weird for me because she just becomes yeah she's like a fairy godmother to casper which is like okay but it just it's just bizarre um yeah they felt like there was some jindid stereotypes going on with the mom i feel like if we had maybe

gotten some flashbacks and maybe this would have been corny but also this is a very corny campy movie but like some flashbacks between Kat and her mom you know Bill Pullman can be there too but if it's like Kat reflecting on memories of her mother and then that way we would get to learn about the mom a bit more and we could see two female characters interacting more in a way that we barely yeah all you really get is kathy moriarty grabbing christina fruity's face right which did pass the bechdel test unfortunately um if you're kathy moriarty grabbing a teenager's face it passes yeah and it does pass what was that line that eric idol says that you that passes oh what he says something like i'm gonna live in a house with purple curtains and green carpets and i'm gonna have a a little dog named kerrigan

a bitch just like you passes the Bechdel test and also Kathy Moriarty says the bitch is back they get to say bitch twice in this movie that's something I miss about children's movies is getting to say bitch two times kids love that shit I love it when people say bitch it's especially when it's Kathy Moriarty talking about herself like that's a very empowering use of the word when Kathy Moriarty calls herself a bitch that passes the Bechdel test that definitely does yeah for sure so yeah I just I think the movie like started to set up some interesting themes and storylines and then they just got forgotten about in the interest of showing this predatory romance um where casper is a perverted creep i also yeah and it's like and and we've talked about this

before there's like not a ton of big movies that are about like single dads i think it's like always an interesting opportunity to see single dads uh especially single dads with daughters where it's like i get that you know that that's set up in the movie of like there's some dissonance he doesn't he still is like adjusting to the idea of being a single parent right there's plenty of like kids watching that movie I'm sure that are like could connect with that experience but then he like is kind of a shitty parent and she just accepts it eventually and so that felt like a missed opportunity as well right but again it's like it's casper um but but every kid on the

planet sees a movie like this and i and i do agree that it's like there are certainly things that would stick with you from this movie that you've probably already seen unfortunately in other movies by the time you see casper you've probably seen a weird child predatory relationship already you've already seen bad parenting from fathers excused as kind of funny um mom's mommy is angel like these are all things that come up in movies pretty frequently um dead moms in general we love a dead mom in children's media and 90s movies for oh kids get her out of there but then bring her back and have her give a plot yeah disney doesn't do that to the dead moms i will say the funniest part of re-watching this movie was because i i very clearly remember being touched when when the dad dies and then he comes back to life i just forgot that that all happened inside of three

minutes what i don't know anyways this movie does technically pass the mental test which is um we celebrate that good for them good for them let's let's get into our nipple scale yes zero to five nipples based on how the movie does when we look at it through an intersectional feminist lens and i would say this movie for me only gets like maybe a nipple and a half because as much as I do like Christina Ricci as Kat, and I do think she's given a fair amount to do in this story, it would have all worked so much better for me if it wasn't all overshadowed by her getting stalked and coerced by a perverted ghost boy. Sure. So I hate that. If it had just been a friendship between them that happened more organically,

and if there had been kind of more focus on some other, either like internal or external struggle she was dealing with like her struggle to make friends because her dad moves her around too much and you know she's dealing with grief from losing her mom and how does that manifest in her choices and behavior and how can that you know affect the story just things like that that could have been more meaningful and interesting to watch but instead it's like yeah let's watch like just a series of fat jokes because of a character named fatso are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. You have to see this little ghost say, can I keep you?

Before surprise kissing an unconscious girl, you have to see Bill Pullman get drunk and fall off a balcony when he's supposed to be looking after his... Oh, gosh. There's just so many weird choices the movie makes uh one and a half nipples uh i'll give one to kathy moriarty's performance as kerrigan and i'll give my half nipple to christ Ricci. And that's all, folks. I'm going to give it to, I am very, like, this movie, I totally agree with what you're saying. Building a movie around a predatory relationship between 12-year-olds is always weird.

It's frustrating because it so easily could have and should have just been a friendship. And the whole movie would have benefited from it. Yeah. And then it would be a movie I would be much more comfortable showing to kids now, like if it had just been a friendship. Right. And I mean, the body shaming jokes, the extreme whiteness of the movie, the like everything about it is so entrenched in 90s kids movie tropes and and but I am always gonna love this movie I think it's just a high camp I think it's like pretty hilarious and uh I just love when a movie is um a live action cartoon I feel like you don't really get many of those now they're fun they're really fun I I just yeah I adore this movie but it is not a uh progressive movie I would say I I love the cat character I feel like there's a lot of missed opportunities with her character

um I feel like there was a way to include the mom in the story that was less dead woman tropey and then Kerrigan is I would say a really underrated movie villain oh Kathy Moriarty really brings the heat I also read that Carrie Fisher and Kathleen Turner were in the running for that part also would have both been great there's like yeah just absolutely fabulous i mean yeah i i love this movie so much but i cannot give it more than two nipples in good faith so i will give it uh two nipples and i will give one to the wake-up machine which should have been a roller coaster and i now it's never going to be a roller coaster because kids don't watch this damn movie anymore. It's not even streaming anywhere. And I will give my other nipple to Kathy Moriarty because I'm no fool.

Yeah. And you should listen to Ghost Church if you want to hear about an esoteric religion that revolves around the idea that the spirits walk among us still. You can listen to it wherever you get your podcast. We'll link it in the description of this episode. And that's our episode about Casper, the friendly ghost. Oh, I love the ending shot of the movie is just Casper eating you. Yeah, he's just barreling toward you. And then you see his mouth and then he's gobbled you up

love it no notes incredible also this was directed by the director of a series of unfortunate events which means that he loves creepy old manners and he loves weird cinderella stories with orphans true brad silverling what's going on shout out brad silverling type he's being typecast he's like he's like i love kids in a mansion anyways um so yes check out ghost church yes check out us on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast check out our matreon at patreon.com slash bechtelcast where you get two bonus episodes every month plus the entire back catalog of over 100 bonuses such as episodes like i frankenstein oh yeah uh-huh and that's it that's all that's there no we recently did uh top gun and face off we've that's where we cover a lot of popular requests in a kind of loose...

This is actually kind of... This is a Matreon-style episode. We've been goofing around on the main feed lately. It's been fun. I feel like we've always been goofing over here. Well, yeah. I guess famously we've been goofing kind of the whole time. We're sort of like impractical jokers a little bit i will say i think it's so their headboards are so funny and i would love a

headboard that just says stinky uh absolutely weird this uh this movie is i know i know i know but it's one of my favorite movies uh ever Still, I realized as I was watching this. That's wild. Well, you can get our, we got merch as well, tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast. And yeah, listen to Ghost Church, listen to the Bechdel cast, brush your teeth, and evade your taxes. Bye. Bye-bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.

Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do. Like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour.

If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson, 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged house, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts.