My Review of "Ghost Dad"

Ghost Dad is a comedy that came out back in 1990. There are a lot of kid friendly elements that I probably really liked as a kid. Watching it today, I realized how terrible this movie is. There are some small redeeming qualities to it. All those redeeming qualities are not enough to make this an entertaining movie for all.

The movie starts out with the Hopper family. There's three kids and Elliot is the dad. The kids consist of one teenager daughter, a middle child son and a toddler daughter. Basically the teenager daughter, Diane, is taking care of the kids. Their mother had passed away. Elliot is the breadwinner of the family.

I like the fact that they play on the fact that we know he's going to be a ghost. They tease the fact that he's going to die in several ways in the beginning of the movie. It's sort of like hot tub time machine where you're wondering where he's going to die. They have a bunch of scenarios only to throw us off. I thought this was pretty clever and fun for the movie.

When Elliot finally becomes a ghost they do an awkward explanation of his scenario. None of it makes consistent sense but that's not really expected when we're dealing with a comedy called Ghost Dad. I let that slip but it's quite wacky the way that they did it. This makes total sense when you realize this is meant for kids. It's almost told to us as the viewer like a child television program.

Elliot's motivations are quite weird. I thought this could have been edited a little better. The intentions make sense after a while but could have been explained a little better. Apparently, he needs to keep his job because he has to get life insurance. The money from the life insurance was supposed to help support the family. Unfortunately for him he is very close to getting fired so he has to get some merger deal going.

This kicks off a series of wild scenarios where Elliot is going to fool everyone around him that he's still alive. The ultimate lesson for Elliot is that his family should come first despite his economic failings. This is kind of a messy thing for him to learn when they focus too much on the antics rather than that story at hand.

There are some fun moments in this movie and I recognize why I liked it when I was a kid. It was dumb and very much catered to kids. There are some adult moments that I thought were quite unnecessary but there they are. Still watching this as an adult will bring you no joy. It's almost like watching a toddler program with a sprinkle of adult humor. The tone is all off and the story is very much scrambled.

Even the ending feels very manipulated. I think they probably had a decent story but someone came in and made tons of changes to it. There is very weird inconsistencies throughout this movie. The ending feels very off even though it wraps everything up in a nice tidy package.

Overall, I was very upset that I couldn't enjoy this movie as much as I did when I was a kid. There are tons of issues with this movie whether it's pacing and tone. I struggled watching through this one because I thought perhaps the next scene would make it better. Each subsequent scene would disappoint. I cannot recommend this movie to anyone. Even if you liked it back in the day you're not going to like it today. I have to give this movie a 3.5 out of 10.