Casper is a 1995 live-action feature film based on the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons and comic strips. The ghosts featured in the film were created through computer-generated imagery. The film stars Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman and Eric Idle.

The film led to an animated television spin-off entitled The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, which featured the same voice actors as the film with Dan Castellaneta and Kath Soucie voicing the Harveys. Casper and his uncles were later animated with computer-generated imagery in the films Casper: A Spirited Beginning, Casper Meets Wendy, Casper's Haunted Christmas and Casper's Scare School, which do not follow the same plot line as this film.

The film opens in the town of Friendship, Maine with two young boys (Chauncey Leopardi and Spencer Vrooman) entering a creepy, old mansion called Whipstaff Manor, apparently on a dare, but they are scared away by Casper (voice of Malachi Pearson), one of the manor's deceased inhabitants. Meanwhile, greedy heiress Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty) is infuriated when she discovers that her recently deceased wealthy father gave his entire fortune to nature and environmental causes, and all he has left to her is Whipstaff Manor, which she believes is worthless. However, when she throws the will into the fireplace, a secret message is revealed that states Whipstaff Manor has a treasure hidden inside it. Bringing along her bumbling lackey Dibbs (Eric Idle), Crittenden drives to Whipstaff Manor and enters the house, only to meet Casper and his beastly uncles the Ghostly Trio (voices of Joe Nipote, Joe Alaskey and Brad Garrett).

Crittenden and Dibbs hire a priest (Don Novello) and a ghostbuster (Dan Aykroyd), but both are unsuccessful. Crittenden even hires a demolition team to tear down the house, but the Ghostly Trio scares them away. Eventually, Casper sees a news story about Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman), who explains that ghosts are simply spirits that have unfinished business on Earth and that as an "afterlife therapist" he tries to help ghosts come to terms with their unfinished business so they can cross over into the next world. Dr. Harvey has become an afterlife therapist in an effort to find the ghost of his late wife Amelia, but his teenage daughter Kat (Christina Ricci) is unhappy that she never gets to stay very long in any school, thus not being able to make any lasting friends. Using his ghostly powers, Casper draws the news story to the attention of Crittenden and she hires Dr. Harvey.

Just before the Harveys arrive at Whipstaff Manor, Dr. Harvey promises Kat that his next assignment will be his last and they seal the agreement as a pinky promise. Once they reach the house, they are confronted by Crittenden and Dibbs. Crittenden is aghast to discover that it may take a long time for Dr. Harvey to get rid of the ghosts and makes it clear that she won't pay him until the ghosts are gone. The Harveys enter the house and Kat goes upstairs by herself in order to pick out a bedroom for herself. Casper, apparently having a crush on her, tries to work up the courage to speak to her, but gets her attention by accident and scares her.

Her father runs upstairs to see what's wrong, but he is as terrified by the sight of a real ghost as she is. Dr. Harvey frantically takes his daughter into a closet and tells her to stay there while he confronts the ghosts on his own. Meanwhile, the Ghostly Trio arrive home from a night's hauntings. Casper tries to convince them to eat outside, but they realize that he's trying to keep them out of the house and shoot him into the sky like a rubber band. With Casper out of the way, he trio find Dr. Harvey and begin attacking him. He ends up fighting them, but he eventually discovers that he can defeat them by sucking them up with a vacuum cleaner.

The next morning, Kat enters the kitchen, first clearing the area with a hand-held vacuum. Casper meets her there and manages to explain to her that he's a friendly ghost. As Casper serves Kat breakfast and entertains her questions about what it's like to be a ghost, the two begin to bond. Kat's father, apparently still agitated from the previous night, arrives a bit later, but when the Ghostly Trio arrive, they become angry at Casper for serving the "intruders" first. Kat tries to defend Casper, but her father hurries her off to school.

At school, Kat is not treated too nicely by the other students, especially Amber Whitmire (Jessica Wesson). When Kat tells the other students that she lives inside Whipstaff Manor, they are shocked to discover that she actually lives inside the spooky mansion. Much to Amber's chagrin the class unanimously votes to move the setting of their Halloween party from her house to Whipstaff Manor. Meanwhile, Casper follows Kat to school, sneaks in her classroom, and ties all the other kids shoelaces together, so that they all trip when the bell rings to get back at them for their treatment of Kat.

In their first session with him, the Ghostly Trio trash several of Dr. Harvey's possessions. Dr. Harvey lets them do this until they try to destroy a photograph of his wife. To his surprise, the trio display an awareness of Amelia and he asks them whether they have a way of contacting others of their kind. They tell him that it involves a lot of difficult paperwork, but that they'll manage it if he keeps "that ghoul Crittenden off our backs."

Meanwhile, Vic DePhillippi (Garette Ratliff Henson) asks Kat to the dance and she agrees. Vic, however, is revealed to be in cahoots with Amber, who wants to get back at Kat, although he shows that he doesn't like the idea. Casper shows signs of being jealous of Vic, but Kat is insistent that she can't go to the Halloween dance with a ghost. In order to impress her, Casper takes her to a lighthouse. When she asks him about his life, he realizes that he doesn't remember any of it and sadly informs her that, when you're a ghost, none of that really matters anymore.

Kat speaks to her father about how she wants to look "date nice" at the dance with Vic. He tells that he would love to buy her whatever she wants, but says that he won't get any money until Crittenden pays him. Later, the Ghostly Trio observe him packing his things. Fearing that he may be moving out, they decide to give him "our own prescription" and take him to a bar. Taking advantage of the Ghostly Trio being out of the house, Crittenden and Dibbs enter the house to search for the treasure.

Meanwhile, Kat finds some of Casper's old possessions from when he was alive and he starts to remember his life. He takes Kat up to the attic where he presents her with a dress of his mother's to wear at the dance. Upon finding an old sled, Casper remembers how he died and explains it to Kat:

“ I begged and begged my dad to give me this sled, but he acted like I couldn't even have it, because I didn't know how to ride. But then one morning, I came down for breakfast and there it was, just for me, for no reason at all. I took it out, went sledding all day. My dad said "that's enough," but I couldn't stop I was having so much fun. It got late...got dark...got cold...and I got sick. My dad got sad... ”

Kat and Casper find an old newspaper article that explains how Casper's father, a great inventor, built a machine called the Lazarus which can bring ghosts back to life. Casper takes Kat to an armchair and activates a contraption called the Up-and-at-'Em Machine that takes her, while seated in the chair, down into the steampunk-esque laboratory of Casper's father. There, they discover the Lazarus immersed in some kind of liquid, presumably water, and find the button that makes it rise up to the surface. The Lazarus is shown to consist of a control panel and a doorway leading to a small chamber where the ghost wishing to become alive again stays while the device is activated.

Crittenden and Dibbs, having overheard Casper telling Kat about how his father hid the Lazarus where no one could find it and thinking that he was talking about the treasure, follow the two into the laboratory. Fortunately for them, the laboratory also happens to contain the vault leading to the treasure. Crittenden and Dibbs try to open the vault door, but find that it's locked.

Kat and Casper find there is only enough of a special red potion - which Casper describes as a "kind of an instant primordial soup mix" - to bring exactly one ghost back to life. Before Casper can be brought back to life, Crittenden and Dibbs steal the potion, realizing that if one of them were to die, they could go through the vault door, get the treasure out and come back to life. Not able to decide which one of them should die, they make several attempts to kill each other.

Eventually, Crittenden tries to run Dibbs down with her car, but he flings the head of a statue at the car, breaking the windshield and causing her to drive out of control and crash into a tree on the edge of a cliff. She survives the crash, but when she gets out of the car she falls down the cliff to her death. Dibbs calls her name, but there is no answer. Figuring that she did not become a ghost, he gives up and starts to walk off, but then Crittenden rises back up in the form of a monstrous ghost.

While enjoying themselves with Dr. Harvey in the bar, the Ghostly Trio contemplate killing him, since it would free him from his "miserable life" and make the Ghostly Trio a quartet, but when Dr. Harvey informs them that he plans to tell Crittenden that she should just leave them be they are touched and unable to kill him. However, moments later, Dr. Harvey falls into an open sewer and dies.

Meanwhile, Crittenden's ghost flies into the laboratory and through the vault door. She unlocks the vault from inside and exits, holding a treasure chest and cackling madly. A moment later, Dibbs enters the laboratory, via the Up-and-at-'Em Machine, with the potion, but Casper steals it back from him. Taking the potion with them, Kat and Casper quickly leave the laboratory and arrive upstairs just in time for Kat to welcome the kids who have arrived for the Halloween party.

After rushing back downstairs, they install the potion into the Lazarus only to find Crittenden inside the machine. She orders Dibbs to turn her human again, but Dibbs refuses, telling her that she can haunt him all she wants and goes on to describe the expensive house he's planning to buy with the treasure, which includes a dog with her name ("a bitch just like you.") Crittenden tells him that he "has a flight to catch" and angrily flings him out a window.

She then turns to Kat and Casper, who point out that ghosts don’t cross over because they have unfinished business and, that since Crittenden is still a ghost, it means she must have unfinished business. Crittenden declares that she has no unfinished business, thereby accidentally causing herself to cross over. The treasure chest falls on the floor and opens, revealing the "treasure" was actually a baseball autographed by Duke Snider, Casper's favorite player.

Kat and Casper again prepare to turn him human, but Dr. Harvey, now a ghost, arrives. As a ghost, he is now loud and goofy like the Ghostly Trio, but apparently has no memory of his daughter. While Casper's uncles are very pleased with this, Kat is driven to tears. However, when she makes the gesture of the pinky promise with her ghostly father, he finally remembers her. Casper realizes that Dr. Harvey must be brought back to life, thereby making it so Casper must remain a ghost.

With her father brought back to life, Kat goes back upstairs to join the party. Amber and Vic sneak into the house planning to freak Kat out by dressing up as a spooky creature, obviously unaware that Kat lives with real ghosts. However, they encouter the Ghostly Trio, who scare them and cause them to run wildly out into the foyer. Their costume falls apart, ruining their prank, but they keep running to Kat's confusion and the applause of the other students.

Amelia Harvey (Amy Brenneman) appears to Casper, revealing that she did not become a ghost, but an angel. For his selfless act of bringing Dr. Harvey back to life instead of himself, she allows Casper to become alive again until ten for the Halloween party as a "sort of a Cinderella deal." Amelia later appears to her husband and explains to him that, because he and Kat loved her so well when she was alive, she had no unfinished business and tells him to not let her become his.

The human Casper (Devon Sawa) joins the party and dances with Kat, but he turns back into a ghost just when he and Kat kiss, freaking out all the other kids and causing them to run wildly out of the mansion. Kat wryly comments that that "wasn't bad for my first party," but her father tells her that the party isn't over yet and the Ghostly Trio begin playing rock music. The disembodied voice of Little Richard sings the theme to "Casper the Friendly Ghost" as Kat, her father and Casper dance together and the end credits start to roll.

Notably, the film includes the first fully computer-rendered lead character in a feature film, beating Woody and Buzz Lightyear of the fully computer-animated Toy Story by six months. However, secondary computer-animated characters had appeared in film before (such as Dino in The Flintstones) though none had had a prominent role. Though this is not the first film in which CGI characters interacted with live-action actors (that honor going to 1985's Young Sherlock Holmes), it is arguably the first one which attempted this with any kind of "acting" on the part of the CGI characters.

However, it's worth noting that CGI ghosts are far easier to insert into a live-action scene than other kinds of CGI characters since the ghosts of the film float, are not affected by light (for example, they lack shadows or reflections) and, most of the time, pass through physical objects, nicely eliminating issues of making room for them in a scene, matching lighting and much of the difficulty of manipulating physical objects for them. In most of the scenes where the ghosts do manipulate or handle physical objects, the objects were recreated in CGI. Creating objects in CGI was not yet fine-tuned at the time and, if one looks closely, it's possible to tell which objects are CGI and which are real. This is due mainly to the CGI objects having smoother surfaces and lacking dust.

Though the film is set mainly in the town of Friendship, Maine, the scenes of the town were actually filmed in Rockport, Maine. However, most of the movie was filmed on sound stages in Universal City, California since the majority of the film takes place inside the fictional Whipstaff Manor.

Casper McFadden has been haunting his family home of Whipstaff Manor for some time, having died from pneumonia (according to a newspaper seen during the scene in the attic) after he played out in the cold for too long when he was twelve years old. Now in the care of his three wicked uncles, Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso, Casper's afterlife is not exactly pleasant. He has had to put up with his uncles' outrageous antics and his wish to gain a friend is always ruined. Casper is very friendly and outgoing, but he sometimes appears rather shy.

The Ghostly Trio are Casper's uncles, and they hate humans, or as they call them, "fleshies" and "bone-bags." They include Stretch, the hot-headed leader, Stinkie who almost always smells and uses his bad breath on others, and Fatso, who loves to eat. The three are chaotic in every sense and can't resist scaring no matter what the cost. However, there is a turning point to their horrid ways when they keep their promise to Dr. Harvey, and get his wife Amelia for him.

Dr. James Harvey (or "Doc" as he is called by the Ghostly Trio) is a psychiatrist and is shown to be an alumnus of Johns Hopkins University. After his wife Amelia's death, he has gone on to become a "ghost therapist," only to find and make contact with his wife, because he believes she is a ghost. However, after learning that she instead became an angel, he and his teenage daughter Kat stay at their new home of Whipstaff, at least according to The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper.

Dr. Harvey has to put up with the Ghostly Trio, who have learned to like him, but never the less he has as well. Dr. Harvey is an easy-going guy with a big heart. He obviously loves Kat, although he sometimes appears rather neglectful of his now motherless daughter's emotional needs. As demonstrated in the scene where he speaks with his angelic wife, he is worried that he's not taking good care of her, but Amelia assured him that he was doing a good job, although she gave him some "motherly" advice ("Don't pick up the extension every time she gets a phone call, french fries are not a breakfast food..." etc.)

Kathleen "Kat" Harvey is the daughter of Dr. Harvey and a fairly typical teenager with a cool sense of humor. She is about thirteen years old (about the age Ricci was when the movie was filmed) and is a generally good companion to Casper. Kat hates having to put up with the Ghostly Trio, because none of them get along with her as would be expected.

Throughout the film, she and Casper have a romance of sorts, in which, for the most part, he is infatuated with her, but she can't get past the fact that he's a ghost. However, despite not reciprocating his obvious interest until the end of the film, in which he temporarily becomes human and they kiss at the Halloween dance, she still appears to care for him.

Carrigan Crittenden is the film's villain and she is thus very nasty and selfish. Her late father had a huge fortune, but he didn't leave any of it to her, which deeply angers her. Therefore, upon discovering that the old mansion that he did leave to her may contain treasure, she becomes obsessed with possessing the treasure for herself. At the end of the film, she dies and becomes a ghost, but is tricked into crossing over.

She is not married as evidenced by the fact that she is referred to as "Miss Crittenden." The fact that her father owned Whipstaff Manor seems to indicate that either she and Casper are distantly related or that someone in her family bought the mansion from someone in his. In her ghostly form, she tended to use stereotypical "evil laughter" frequently, although the only time she used it when she was alive was when she was trying to run Dibbs down with her car.

Paul "Dibbs" Plutzker appears to work for Carrigan Crittenden as a kind of toady despite the fact she constantly belittles him. Although he is technically a villain, he doesn't seem to be as nasty a person as she is. His motivations are unclear, but he turns on her when he thinks he has the advantage, only to be cast out of a window by her. The film doesn't explain what happens to him after this or even if he survived. His full name is only known from the end credits, since he is always referred to as "Dibbs" in the actual film.

Some reviewers have identified him as her lawyer, since he acts much as a lawyer in the scene where he and Carrigan are introduced, but his behavior later in the film is very atypical of a lawyer. The most likely connection between Crittenden and Dibbs seems to be that they are lovers. For example, he refers to her with terms such as "sweetheart" and "baby" throughout the movie, in one scene she seems to kiss him on the lips and he tells her that "we're through" after turning on her. When he introduces himself to the Harveys, he says he's a "close personal friend" of hers.

According to the film's trailer, Casper has been dead for over one hundred years, but the fact that he owns a baseball autographed by Duke Snider, which, presumably, he got while he was still alive, means he could not have died any earlier than the 1940s. However, earlier in the film Mr. Rugg (Ben Stein) said that Whipstaff Manor was "lousy fifty years ago...now it's condemned." The film was made in the 1990s, so fifty years ago would be the 1940s, making the house "lousy" while Casper was still living. In Casper: A Spirited Beginning, he dies in the present day.

Furthermore, this means that Whipstaff Manor is, apparently, condemned, making it unclear how the Harveys can be allowed to live there, especially after Crittenden's death since she legally owned the house and they were only living in it under her authority.

Crittenden and Dibbs are seen walking down the chair's track into the McFadden laboratory, while, earlier, they were riding in the chair. Also, the fact that they were in the chair at all is strange considering that the chair seemed to have remained in the laboratory with Kat and Casper the whole time.

When she allows Casper to come alive again until ten, Amelia tells Casper, when he asks why Cinderella got until midnight, that "Cinderella wasn't twelve years old." Earlier in the film when Casper is explaining his death to Kat, the camera goes over a bunch of newspaper articles and one says "pneumonia claims life of 11 yr. old boy."

The film's "rules" for its supernatural elements are somewhat vague and contradictory. The most obvious example of this is the fact that ghosts in the film can pass through solid object, yet seem to be capable of interacting with physical objects whenever they so choose, although this contradiction had previously appeared in Casper comics and cartoons. The other plot holes involving cosmic "rules" that will be mentioned in this section are unique to this film.

According to the film, ghost are souls of the deceased who have "unfinished business" on earth. The reason Casper stayed behind as a ghost is explained to be the fact that he was needed to keep his grieving father company, but his father is now long dead, so there is no obvious reason for Casper to remain a ghost.

Also, the characters who become ghosts during the course of the film appear as "cartoonalized" versions of the live-action actors and, thus, have hair and articles of clothing, which the other ghosts do not have. Carrigan Crittenden's ghost is physically larger then the other ghosts and speaks in slightly modulated voice, making her seem more powerful and intimidating, while Dr. Harvey's ghost is about the size of the other ghosts and speaks in his normal voice. Crittenden's hair is also brown as a ghost, while blonde as a human. Although this is seen as a contradiction, it may be a pointed joke that Crittenden is not a real blonde. The ghosts of characters who die during the film are voiced by the same actors who play them in live-action, while, when Casper is brought back to life, he is not played by the same actor who voiced him in his ghostly form.

Another feature that happens to ghosts in the film after they die(particullaly Casper and Dr. Harvey) is that they appear to forget eveything about their life until something incredibly familiar reawakens their memory yet Crittigan appears to remember everything when she dies.

After Dr. Harvey is brought back to life, there should be two Dr. Harveys; one alive and one dead. The film never explains what happened to Dr. Harvey's dead body.

The film was generally well-received as a family feature, with Time Out London describing it as "an intimate and likeable film". The CGI effects, which were cutting edge at the time, and the performances of Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci were especially praised, especially considering that, in the scenes where the Harveys interact with the ghosts, Pullman and Ricci were actually acting with nothing.

Cathy Moriarty's performance, however, was much criticized, with Variety saying she does "a poor woman's Cruella de Vil" in the movie. Many reviewers also felt that Eric Idle, being a venerable comedian, was underused in the role of Moriarty's obsequious henchman. Some critics also felt it was a mistake for the film to juxtapose cartoon-esque comedy with serious themes about death. Nevertheless, the film was a success at the box office, grossing $100 million in the United States, almost twice its budget, and $326 million worldwide.

The film continues to be shown on television in the family feature slot of many networks, especially around Halloween and Christmas.