Topper

I wonder what could have possessed Kate Jackson to attempt a role that requires a "madcap" attitude. This is beyond her range. Even her voice doesn't vary much in intonation, while Topper requires personalities that are exemplified by the "flapper" of personality so prevalent in movies that depict the Roaring Twenties.

Nobody in this film fits their roles. Rue McClanahan is sleepwalking. I like her, but she should have bought Blanche Deveraux to this role. Jack Warden...I like him in serious roles; comedy also not his strong point.

I keep thinking someone just decided to do a remake for the heck of it, and Kate Jackson decided to try her hand at comedy. Not a good fit for her. Her manner is too stiff and wooden for comedy. . And Stevens is no better. For a movie about ghost trying to reach Heaven, it's completely earthbound and plodding. I wish I could find something funny about it, but that would be quite a reach. I imagine it will be okay for those who never saw the original, or for whom the concept of "zany" is a term they cannot fathom. Guess you had to be there, in this case!

A completely forgettable remake.

This disco remake has none of the comedy, charm.or chemistry of the original. Maybe that is why Kate and Andrew's marriage was just as unsuccessful. This pilot was mercifully unsold as a series.

Kate Jackson has no sense of humor, takes herself too seriously and fails miserably at comedy.

This remake of the wonderful Topper movies and early TV series lacks a few things...plot, acting, sets. Even the talented Rue McClanahan and Jack Warden seem as though they'd rather be anywhere else! I'm afraid that Kate Jackson and her husband at the time, Andrew Stevens, don't even come close to the charm of Constance Bennett and Roland Young in the Topper movies. And as for a snappy ghostly presence, the early TV series starring the amazing husband and wife team of Anne Jefferys and Robert Sterling, has it all over this boring version.

Awful dialogues, awful acting. Even the established actors could not save it. No chemistry or fun. Very forced and contrived.

The Topper story is funny because it's terrifyingly serious. Images of the dead warn a man that his time is limited and that he's wasting what little there is of it.

In the TV series, Topper was a beaten-down man, his life colorless because he is becalmed somewhere between failure and success. In this new version, Topper is a great success in business and the point is that when you reach the top, there's nothing there for you. It's an interesting variation, but nobody seems to have found it a fruitful source of humor.