Casper Meets Wendy

Casper Meets Wendy is a 1998 direct-to-video family fantasy-comedy film based on the Harvey Comics cartoon characters Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch. The film is a sequel to Casper: A Spirited Beginning, and is the second spin-off/prequel of Casper. Saban Entertainment, co-produced the project. The film also marks the second Casper film to co-star Cathy Moriarty, who played the villainess in the 1995 film.

This was the first major film for Hilary Duff, who was 10 years old when the film was released on September 22, 1998, six days before her 11th birthday, and was met with mostly negative reviews from critics, but was considered an improvement to its predecessor. It then aired on October 27, 1998, four days before Halloween, on Fox Family.

Plot
Living under the care of his uncles: The Ghostly Trio, Casper has been letting them push him around and making his afterlife miserable by having him do chores for them while they are scaring "fleshes" for their amusement. While taking a vacation, Casper meets with a good little witch girl named Wendy, whom she and her bewitching aunts are on the run from an evil warlock: Desmond Spellman who attempts on destroying her after discovering that she will be a greater witch than him. Like Casper, Wendy is a kind witch who also has her relatives mistreating her. The two become good friends as they discover that ghosts and witches are each other's worst enemies, so they come up with a plan to make their elders pair up to one another. Once Desmond comes into town, he determines to destroy Wendy at once. It is now up to Casper as he must get the courage to convince his uncles to help him to save his friend and her aunts from the villainous warlock.

Why It's A Bewitching Live Action Nightmare

 * 1) Like with the previous film: Casper: A Spirited Beginning, the movie fails to follow the continuity of the original 1995 film, despite being label as a prequel.
 * 2) Once again the CGI are poorly realized compared to the 1995 film.
 * 3) * What makes it worst is that with this movie focusing on witchcraft, a lot of the visual effects whenever the witches displayed their magic, are noticeably cheap, and the CGI feels like they belong in a Pixar movie at the time or a Interplay game.
 * 4) * Also, some of the flying affects with the witches does shares some painful similarities to the flying scenes from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
 * 5) The acting is terrible.
 * 6) Like with the Ghostly Trio in the previous two movies (as well as in this movies) Wendy's bewitching aunts babbles stupid witch puns and bad jokes.
 * 7) * They also display a sense of sexual harassment, whenever they come across to a guy they find themselves attracted while the feeling isn't mutual.
 * 8) * They also come off as discount versions of the Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus.
 * 9) The title should've been reverse to Wendy Meets Casper, as the story is mainly from her point of view.
 * 10) For the third time in a role, a painfully dated subplot of a generic bully who wants to make the live-action lead's life miserable.
 * 11) Casper and the Ghostly Trio feel more expendable this time around, as they (for the most part) barely get involved with the film's main conflict to point where they could almost be easily replace by any other supernatural creature, and the events of the movie would remain relatively the same.
 * 12) The entire plot point of ghosts and witches being natural-born enemies have never been put into much detail, and just seems like a lazy excuse to build conflict between the two race. While we kind of get an idea from the ghosts' POV, with the line "Witches are fleshies with power!", stating that ghosts have met there match when it comes to scaring the living, we never understand the conflict from the witches' side.
 * 13) Desmond Spellman doesn't come off all that interesting as a villain (pretty much like the villains in the previous two movies), and has a tired old villain trope of being too infatuated with himself.
 * 14) Also like with A Spirited Beginning, it also has a dull and overly long opening sequence.
 * 15) Casper has been reduced to being just along for the ride, and is portrayed more of a simp towards Wendy.
 * 16) Hilary Duff is quite annoying, especially in the painfully cliché breakdown scene where Wendy ends her friendship with Casper after he unintentionally broke his promise to her when he wasn't suppose to tell his uncles about her and her aunts not using high magic or else they'll be spotted by Desmond's magic radar. Her acting in that scene is quite cringeworthy.
 * 17) The movie also never shows how the witches knew about Desmond's magic radar, as it was only bought up after Desmond presented it to his henchmen due to their failures of capturing Wendy, and they only seem to know about it because the plot demands it.
 * 18) Pauly Shore once again returns and was given an annoying rap scene.
 * 19) A major continuity error, when Desmond ask the witches, about how they were able to live without magic so long, despite the fact that the movie takes place within the space of a day.
 * 20) Despite being a sequel to Casper: A Spirited Beginning, many of the characters of that movie, aside from Casper and the Ghostly Trio, are never shown or even mentioned.
 * 21) Despite Desmond's henchman: Jules and Vincent being strong, they are too bumbling and stupid to be considered a threat, making them unrememberable as a result.
 * 22) Dated 90's pop songs.
 * 23) It has the sappiness ending out all the endings of every Casper movie (at least in live-action).
 * 24) Because of her growing popularity, the movie had become mostly remembered for being Hilary Duff's first major feature as many DVD box arts gave her top-billing (compared to the original VHS where actors playing Wendy's aunts and Desmond Spellman were top-billing) to the point where most people tend to view this more as a Hilary Duff movie that just has Casper in it rather than an actual Casper movie.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) It is an improvement over the previous film.
 * 2) The voice acting once again for the ghosts is pretty spot on.
 * 3) Casper and Wendy have good chemistry together.
 * 4) While still not as good as the 1995 film, the effects on the ghosts are slightly better than the ones on A Spirited Beginning.
 * 5) Both the Ghostly Trio and Wendy's aunts redeem themselves by showing that they care for their nephew and niece respectively.
 * 6) Despite Desmond not being a compelling villain, the final climax with him at the end is the best that a Casper movie has (again in live-action) with its main villain.
 * 7) The Ghostly Trio finally get to be the heroes, as all three of them use their powers to defeat the villain.
 * 8) Casper finally stood up to his uncles.

The Movie
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Reviews
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