Word: kats
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...film, written by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver, has the cartoons' familiar plot: Casper searches for a friend and finds one in Kat (Christina Ricci), a lonely girl now in residence at sepulchral Whipstaff Manor. Among the contenders for possession of this dark old house, which looks like a tyrant's wedding cake that has started to melt, are a venal heiress (the ripely funny Cathy Moriarty) and her sidekick (Eric Idle); Casper's uncles, three ectoplasmic boors named Stretch, Fatso and Stinkie; and Kat's klutzy dad (crinkly Bill Pullman...
Here's where the Liebestod kicks in. Still grieving for his late wife, Dad has become a "therapist to the dead," vowing to ease their turmoil so they can rest in peace. The sensible Kat is automatically spooky because she is played by Ricci, the Addams Family daughter. With her wide eyes and genius-size forehead, Ricci now officially assumes the mantle of death-driven teen that Winona Ryder once wore so becomingly. She is Casper's perfect human soul mate...
...expert computer animation by Dennis Muren and his fellow effects wizards at ILM, Casper is cute and pudgy -- a Pillsbury ghost boy. Yet he is also a dead child speaking from an unquiet grave. Poaching on her father's turf, Kat serves as Casper's therapist and helps him remember his life and early death. "What's it like to die?" Kat asks eagerly, and Casper replies, "Like being born-only backwards." Before long, Kat is forced to decide who lives and who dies-her father or her new best friend...
...illustrator and studied for a time (1936-38) in London. He was imbued with the thick-massed but linear realism that came out of the Ashcan School and filled the cartoons that John Sloan and others did for periodicals like the New Masses. He doted on Krazy Kat (as did his friend Philip Guston) and the superstylish illustrations of John Held Jr. The black-and-white tradition was in his head, where it coexisted with a considerable range of other references...
...asset remains John Guare's dazzling script. With humor and affection, it pokes fun at everything from marriage ("My wife is a dada manifesto"), to Cats ("Aeschylus did not invent theater to have it end with a bunch of chorus kids wondering which of them will go to Kitty Kat Heaven."), to Harvard students, ("Is that all I am? An investment?"). At the same time it captures with great compassion and understanding the tragic fears and disappointments in the lives of those who seem to have...