Casper

Casper. Amblin Entertainment 1995.

Before watching the movie:

To be completely transparent, I do recall wanting to watch this movie and being in the room trying to watch it shortly after it came out. But it was a very large room with a lot of other things to do and I was very young and had a short attention span, and I don’t remember much beyond the fact that it was on the screen. I have much clearer, more recent memories, of a tie-in Pepsi commercial than I do of the movie itself. So I consider it more fair to review this as a “first time” watch than as a rewatch.

That said, this was probably my introduction to the world of Casper, though I may have seen some of the tie-in TV series. It looked so current and yet I’m sure I was also aware it was a property that had already been around.

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Soapdish

Soapdish. Paramount Pictures 1991.
Soapdish. Paramount Pictures 1991.

Before watching the movie:

There is so much star power in this movie I hadn’t heard of. I know Robert Downey Jr. was popular when he was young before he had to take a break to get clean and rebuild his reputation, but I think he’s still a bigger hit now than he ever was before. I always enjoy Kevin Kline, but while he’s gotten a lot of great comedy leads and supporting roles, I don’t think he ever got the comedy superstar status he may deserve. And of course, the movie is led by Sally Field and has Whoopi Goldberg in a role that might have 30 seconds of screen time for all I can tell with how prominent her name is versus how big she was in the 90s.

It occurs to me that I really enjoy spoofs of soap operas, though I don’t really seek them out. I saw several episodes of Soap some years ago but never continued after we finished the first disc or two, maybe because it was too much actual soapiness vs. mocking soapiness. Or perhaps I like the spoofs in concentrated bursts. Even Saturday Night Live’s “The Californians” was funny the first time. But what really draws me to this is that the story is about the drama going on off-camera, which makes me expect something like if Noises Off collided with Days of Our Lives.

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