Wording in this review with my other recent reviews for the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons is going to be very similar. This is mainly though because the cartoons do have the same merits and also similar faults.
Famous Studios' cartoons are not for all tastes, but my opinion is that their early stuff and some of the early 50s output are good. While they were very formulaic they were always well animated and voiced with some funny parts, some poignancy and decent characters and their regular composer Winston Sharples could always be relied on to write a great and often outstanding score.
Admittedly though, by the mid-50s through to the late-60s Famous Studios' cartoons did get repetitive. While Sharples' music still shone and the voice actors did their best the animation suffered due to lower budgets and tighter deadlines, the humour became more tired and slow in timing than sharp and funny, the stories became increasingly predictable and rehashed and some characters started losing their initial spark, this is particularly true of most of the later Herman and Katnip cartoons.
'Little Boo Peep' is a very cute and charming Casper cartoon, with some clever and easily recognisable nods to classic nursery rhyme characters (such as Little Bo Peep, Humpty Dumpty and the blackbirds in a pie). The basic story is very standard Casper territory, but the nursery rhyme reference concept was dealt with very well and gives it a little more originality than most of the early 50s Casper cartoons, where the series was starting to while still watchable or more get fatigued.
Story-wise, while very sweet and touching often, it is repetitive and very more of the same (the ghosts wanting to scare while Casper finds a friend, people or animals being afraid and running away from him, making a friend and then saving them from a life or death situation), if you have seen any Casper cartoon it won't take long seeing more that you're watching basically the same story or structure but with variations. The dialogue also falls on the wrong side of twee and is by far the asset that is the most easily forgettable, also so similar to previous Casper cartoons that you can practically recite the next line from a number of seconds away.
The cartoon's villain Wolfie could have been a much more threatening antagonist, being pretty goofy and ordinary, which does rob the already predictable and quite derivative climax of urgency and intensity. One really has to love Casper's friendly and helpful nature, but there is not quite enough of his and Little Bo Peep's chemistry to make their friendship quite as believable, sweet and engaging as it still is, as in his previous friendships in his previous cartoons.
Animation on the whole was well done, and an improvement on the animation in the previous Casper cartoon despite being fairly similar stylistically. Thankfully being closer to the very fluid and detailed animation style of the early output rather than the sparser and flatter style of the studio's later cartoons. The colours are vibrant and atmospheric, it mostly looks smooth, apart from some roughness here and there, and the backgrounds are meticulous in their detail.
Winston Sharples' music score here is typically merry and whimsical, it's beautifully orchestrated, energetic and adds so much to the mood, his music has always been one of the best assets of the Famous Studios cartoons and it's not an exception here. In fact how it's composed and how it meshes so well with everything going on in the animation, story and action contributes to it being the best thing about the cartoon.
Reactions towards Casper are nice and varied with some imaginative visuals, especially in the bit with the blackbirds in a pie and Humpty Dumpty. The voice acting is dependably strong, with Sid Raymond immediately recognisable if anybody is familiar with his Katnip voice.
Overall, a decent Casper cartoon but somewhat middling when ranked in his filmography, which is largely to do with the period it comes from. 7/10 Bethany Cox
