The Canterville Ghost

Neve Campbell and her family (small brothers, sympathetic mum, physicist and cynic father) travel from America to England when he lands a lucrative research post, and almost immediately strange things begin to happen in the de Canterville ancestry home.

Bumps and moans in the night, bloodstains, invisible hands on the shoulder - yes, there's a ghost about.

Oscar Wilde's story takes shape beautifully in this TV version, one of the numerous adaptations of his tale for children. Patrick Stewart is the ghostly Simon de Canterville, doomed to walk the house at night for all eternity for his earthly crimes, and he is watchable, especially wrestling with the pride of 400 years dead and no one to bow and scrape around him.

This being a fairy tale there's romance for Ginny as well in the shape of a local Duke (Daniel Betts) who is sympathetic to ghosts and very charming, as local Dukes so often are in these stories. Donald Sinden and Joan Sims play butler and housekeeper, shielding guilty secrets, and Leslie Philips appears briefly as the current representative of family de Canterville.

Recommended for children and adults alike, 'The Canterville Ghost' is charming, touching, and with just the right amount of suspense. The Americans may be paint-by-numbers stereotypes, but that doesn't matter. Without Stewart, I might have rated this much lower, but it definitely deserves high points for his performance alone.

Do you remember those charming, touching, romantic movies from the 40s or 50s? Can you imagine one of those transformed into a teenie film without loosing a bit of its charm? Well, it can be done, as this film proves.

It's the perfect film for an autumn evening with a fire crackling in the fireplace and the lights turned low.

While there are still many variances from the original story, this version hewed much more closely to it than the 1944 film, which bore little more resemblance to the original than the name. I think this one was well served by the greater similarity.

I thought all the actors did a great job, though I was a bit put off by the peevishness of the father character during most of the movie. In the original story he was also a non-believer, but with much more good humor and sympathy.

I don't know if anyone has ever tried enacting the story as written but I'd be interested in seeing it if they did.

Fore I did in fact enjoy this.

Its not everyday that after years of watching thousands of movies, shows and anime from across the decades from the turn of the century with black and white silent flicks, to modern crud or the odd good modern film. I am not going to pretend I am some great critic that writes like a poet, but this film, though made for tv, was good. IT had the super talented and entertainment Sir Patrick Stewart, Neve Campbell back in her super cute early 20s, and a relatively funny "newer" version of one of Oscar Wilde's short stories. The irony is that this story was like the polar opposite of The Portrait of Dorian Grey, which is a storye of Wilde's I love. Yet for those not familiar with the Canterville Ghost the tale is about a different kind of immortality; stuck in perpetual pergatory and not actually being allowed to move on to heaven or hell. Just stuck in a lonely, sad, soul crushing, purposeless ghostly existence. At least Dorian Grey got to live, but he was too much of a hollow, nearly dead foppish fool. Dead on the inside as the Ghost of Canterville was in all truth and meaning of the word. BUt it was kinda light hearted as older made for tv stories were.Its got that kinda grainy lower quality look to the film from the older tech and trying to shoot scenes by actual candlelight ( with dim but noticable staged lgihting here and there too at times)...but I loved that back in the day. The story is nice and charming ina simple way that almost anyone can watch, even young children of 5+ years old. Its hardly a real horror story. And the family and myself liked it immensely. Almost an 8 out of 10 for that fine tale and ending.

What cuteness, great adaptation, half youthful, half romantic, a little dramatic and almost nothing frightening, anyway, delicious ... Gracinha da Família, a simple and captivating film...