Boo Moon

Casper sees "the man in the moon" and he looks friendly, so he flies up there to meet him. When he gets there, he discovers the moon is just a bunch of rocks and craters. "Wow," I am thinking, "the writers of this cartoon are way ahead of everyone since that's exactly correct as we found out for sure decades later." However, as a tired Casper takes a nap, a bunch of little men spot him and capture him, a la "Gulliver's Travels," except they take the "giant" in a crate When posting this review, I noticed under "trivia" that the king in this movie, "King Bomba," was in Gulliver's Travels so I guess my analogy was right on.

The story, as most Casper stories tended to be, is geared strictly for little kids. I understand this was made in 3-D which would have made it fun for adults to view, too, but I only saw it on a cheap DVD where the picture was decent but not noteworthy, and obviously not in 3-D. I swear I recognize some of the adult voices in here but the "cast" is not listed in on the title page.

I would love to have seen this in 3-D. I'm sure it would have elevated my rating considerably. Otherwise, this is strictly for very young kids.

Not only that, but also one of the best Casper cartoons overall. Personally don't agree that the Casper cartoons are poorly animated (the early cartoons have some very good animation to me), but a vast majority of them are very repetitive and like recycled rehashes and get overly twee with dialogue that can get annoying and forgettable.

Reiterating what has been said by me quite a few times, 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.

For a Casper cartoon, 'Boo Moon' stands out among the rest of them. The plot-line is by far the most unique, being one rarity of not containing the same story over and over, while the writing makes for one of the least sentimental and twee Casper cartoons. Of all the Casper cartoons too, 'Boo Moon' is a contender for the most imaginative visually and story-wise. The animation is stunning, the scenes in outer space contain not just the best-looking animation in a Casper cartoon but also in the whole Famous Studios/Noveltoons oeuvre. Being the only Casper cartoon in 3D, it definitely stands out among the rest of the Casper cartoons and Famous Studios in general.

Winston Sharples' 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. There are even some nice haunting parts too, like the scene with the trees. 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 one of the best things about the cartoon.

The Lilliputians are very charming characters and their friendship with Casper sweet, though it is not completely buyable how they trusted Casper so quickly. The scene with the trees leaves me in awe at how frightening (easily the most intense scene of any Casper cartoon since the climax of 'There's Good Boos Tonight) and almost surreal it is, it may scare younger ones but that scene always transfixed me as a child.

My only minor complaint, other than Casper being trusted perhaps too quickly, is the Casper self-pity scene which is cloying and anybody fed up of the same plot and dialogue in every Casper cartoon may feel tempted to think "here we go again" and shut it off. Doing that would be a shame because the rest of 'Boo Moon' is a very different and imaginative cartoon that was a very pleasant surprise.

Anybody who dislikes repetition, recycling and dialogue falling on the wrong side of twee and cloying repeating itself in almost every cartoon will also find 'Boo Moon' a pleasant surprise, as evidenced in a previous review. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Does anyone above the age of infancy actually enjoy Casper the Friendly Ghost? His cartoons are badly drawn and poorly animated, the "jokes" are unfunny, and nearly all of his cartoons feature the same plot line recycled endlessly ... a plot line that later was devastatingly (and hilariously) deconstructed in a classic episode of "Cheers".

(A correspondent has pointed out to me that the Casper toons of the '40s and '50s are better animated than 90% of the cartoons produced today, in the early 21st century. True, but those same Caspers -- made in the golden age of Hollywood studio animation -- are execrably animated when compared to cartoons produced in the same period at Warners, UPA and so forth ... and, I repeat, all those Caspers had the same plot.)

"Boo Moon" is the single glorious exception to the flood of treacle in Casper's filmography. Made during the 3-D movie craze, "Boo Moon" is the only Casper toon in 3-D, with a much higher production budget (and vastly better animation) than usual for Paramount's animation studio. Best of all, it has an intelligent plot line that's radically different from Casper's usual self-pity routine ... and, for possibly the only time in the entire Casper series, some action that (for little children, at least) is genuinely scary ... but with a happy ending, of course.

The story begins in a typical American city, where Casper is wallowing in his usual "nobody loves me" routine ... until he notices a sidewalk pitchman with a telescope, offering views of the moon. Now it dawns on Casper that, if he goes to the moon, he might make some friends. Being a ghost, he simply floats into the air and levitates moonwards. There's some excellent 3-D animation here, of the moon in outer space from Casper's P.O.V., gradually coming into extreme close-up and sharp focus. Nicely done!

Unlike our real moon, this toon moon is inhabited by little tiny people who look like Lilliputians, and they make friends with Casper instantly. If normal-sized people are afraid of Casper, why would little tiny people (who are easier to stomp) be so quick to trust him? Anyway, Casper is an instant success with his little friends, until a Lilliputian sentry shouts that the Tree Men are attacking.

This is the part that might scare little kids. Gigantic walking trees with leering faces come striding across the lunar landscape: this is creepy enough in flat 2-D format, but it's truly unnerving (and very well animated) in 3-D here. Meanwhile, the soundtrack is playing some really impressive "here come the monsters" music that I've never heard anywhere else: it doesn't seem to be Paramount stock music, and it might actually have been written for this cartoon. Anyway, this has got to be the best sequence in the entire history of Paramount's animation studio.

Needless to say, Casper uses his ghostly abilities to chase away the Tree Men in a (mostly) non-violent way. But of course the next Casper cartoon has him back on Earth again. Why didn't Casper stay on the moon ... where the moon people like him, and they need his help to keep away the Tree Men? I guess he'd rather stay on Earth and watch people go "A guh-guh-ghost!"

As a kid of 9 back in 1977 when my family was vacationing in Chicago where I was born, I watched this on an independent TV station there which marked my first time seeing a Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon. Before just watching this again on YouTube, all I remembered was the beginning when a crowd of people ran away from Casper in the subway with him bemoaning scaring them because of what he was and the end when his theme song was played. Oh, I also remembered him going to the moon but it wasn't until seeing this again that I even remembered some of what was going on there. It seems that planet has some little people, like Lilliputians from the Max Fleischer Gulliver's Travels, ruled by the same king from that cartoon feature. So of course Casper is captured because of his massive size and that he's a ghost (not really logical but one learns to suspend disbelief in cases like this) but then he redeems himself when some tree monsters come rampaging...This one was pretty entertaining concerning possible scares for little kids concerning those haunting trees. I know this short was made in 3-D and I've yet to see that version of it but even without using those kinds of glasses, I can see the entertaining value of this cartoon for those tots and some adults willing to go back to the kind of simple tale like this one was. So I say give Boo Moon a look.