Leaving aside Bill Cosby's recent run-ins the with the law, I must say I've never found him the least bit amusing. Maybe it's an American 'thing' mixing slapstick, sentimentality and someone talking like they have a mouth full of toilet paper. Who knows... But for whatever reason, he was the highest actor on American TV for years, and was one of the first true black superstars of the media age. You may wonder why these impressive credentials didn't help him develop a more lucrative movie career... Until you sit through something as terrible as 'Ghost Dad', of course.
Dear oh dear, what WERE his agent and him thinking when they flicked through THIS script and decided it would be worth making? Having already starred in a string of flops at the cinema, Cosby NEEDED this, as a last throw of the dice, to be a hit. Needless to say... He came up snake eyes, and he never did have the popularity on the big screen he enjoyed on the far smaller one. Not a great loss, in my view.
To start with, his character in the movie is HORRIBLE. He spends all his time at work (to the extent where he reads bedtime stories for his youngest on cassette, forgets all their birthdays and can't even remember each child's name...) so we instantly hate him off the bat. When he DOES join the regions of the undead, the director seems to make up the rules for if he can be seen in daylight, whether he can touch solid objects or not and what kind of powers he has as a spook as he goes along. There is NO consistency here... Aside from the dreadful attempts at comedy and the non-performances from all involved.
And just when you think things couldn't get ANY worse... It pulls out the most pathetic deus ex machina of an ending you'll EVER likely see. How the screenwriter scribbled this crap down with a straight face I'll never know. At least he probably laughed more than the poor, poor audience. This is truly a film as dead on arrival as it's protagonist... The difference no-one would try to bring it back from the afterlife. 2/10
Dear oh dear, what WERE his agent and him thinking when they flicked through THIS script and decided it would be worth making? Having already starred in a string of flops at the cinema, Cosby NEEDED this, as a last throw of the dice, to be a hit. Needless to say... He came up snake eyes, and he never did have the popularity on the big screen he enjoyed on the far smaller one. Not a great loss, in my view.
To start with, his character in the movie is HORRIBLE. He spends all his time at work (to the extent where he reads bedtime stories for his youngest on cassette, forgets all their birthdays and can't even remember each child's name...) so we instantly hate him off the bat. When he DOES join the regions of the undead, the director seems to make up the rules for if he can be seen in daylight, whether he can touch solid objects or not and what kind of powers he has as a spook as he goes along. There is NO consistency here... Aside from the dreadful attempts at comedy and the non-performances from all involved.
And just when you think things couldn't get ANY worse... It pulls out the most pathetic deus ex machina of an ending you'll EVER likely see. How the screenwriter scribbled this crap down with a straight face I'll never know. At least he probably laughed more than the poor, poor audience. This is truly a film as dead on arrival as it's protagonist... The difference no-one would try to bring it back from the afterlife. 2/10