Ghost Writers

The late-40s to the early/mid-50s Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons had a higher budget and overall the overall quality was much better. Onwards, the quality did diminish quite significantly though the overall cartoons varied, some decent, many mediocre.

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.

After 'Boo Moon' (the last great Casper cartoons), many of the Casper cartoons were at best average, compensated by mainly the always outstanding music but hampered by being too twee and repetitive primarily and by the noticeably lower budget.

Overall, there are definitely worse Casper cartoons than 'Ghost Writers' but it just feels pointless, with the footage from previous Casper cartoons ('Once Upon a Rhyme', 'To Boo or Not to Boo' and 'Casper's Spree Under the Sea', three of the best Casper cartoons) being significantly better than the ghost writers scenes framing them.

The animation is very mixed here, the difference in animation quality between the older cartoons and the framing story (which is still thin and with very little point to it) with the ghost writers is very noticeable. It is very good in the three cartoons being shown, but very scrappy and nowhere near as attractive for the rest of the cartoon.

Consistently good here is the music score from Winston Sharples. The 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.

With the scenes from 'Once Upon a Rhyme', 'To Boo or Not to Boo' and 'Casper's Spree Under the Sea', there are many charming moments and some of the funniest moments come from the very imaginative reactions to Casper. The scenes with the ghost writers are not particularly funny and not very well written, the ghost writers themselves being annoying especially the bigger one coming up with all the ideas (a poorly drawn character too). Casper is very appealing here.

In summary, the three scenes from previous Casper cartoons are the highlights as well as the music, but there is not much point to it and the ghost writers scenes didn't do anything for me. 5/10 Bethany Cox