Ghost Dad (1990)

Nowadays, it’s not a big deal to see an actor on both television and in movies. But back in the earlier days of television, before the rise of prestige shows and respected cable networks, television was a stepping-stone to something bigger. It was a way to get to the silver screen and find even bigger fame and money. It was a path to future success and wasn’t the success, in and of itself.

Television stars of old were always looking for the right moment to transition out of television and into movies. Some of them found the success that they were looking for. They would skyrocket into some of the biggest stars in the movie industry. Tom Hanks came from the television show Bosom Buddies to become someone that audiences loved to watch in the most popular movies. Denzel Washington sprung out of St. Elsewhere to become a respected actor in his own right. There were some major success stories coming from the move from small screen to big.

Other stars didn’t fare nearly as well, however, and either fizzled out or went back to television. One of the biggest of those was David Caruso. He found success as Detective John Kelly on NYPD Blue. This prompted him to leave the show early in the second season to try and make a run at a film career. It didn’t happen and he ended up back on television, starring in the successful CSI: Miami, and creating a meme that would last forever. Yeah.

Bill Cosby sort of fit into both the success and failure of a film career. He was a majorly successful television star. He came to prominence in the television show I Spy in the late 1960s before creating his successful animated show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which began in 1972 and lasted well into the 1980s. Then he went on to The Cosby Show, a massively successful sitcom that ran from 1984 until 1992. All that television success primed him for a feature film career, multiple times.

His film career began in the 1970s with some mild success. Throughout that decade, he made a trio of films with Sidney Poitier. Each one starred Poitier and Cosby and was directed by Poitier. He made a couple other films, before slowing that part of his career and heading back to television. Once he found more television success from The Cosby Show, he would head back to the big screen. And he would attempt to capture the same big screen magic from the 1970s. That was because Bill Cosby would reteam with Sidney Poitier for a 1990 family film.

Ghost Dad told the story of Elliot Hopper (Bill Cosby), a hard-working father who spent much more time with his job than with his family. His wife had passed away a few years earlier, so Elliot had to work harder to earn more money to support his children. Diane (Kimberly Russell) was the eldest child and had to essentially take care of her brother, Danny (Salim Grant), and sister, Amanda (Brooke Fontaine). After a long day at work, Elliot got into a taxi, which was involved in an accident. Next thing he knew, he was a ghost. But he needed to live on for three more days to get a promotion that would keep his kids out of poverty.

Sidney Poitier directed the family flick, but he didn’t appear on screen. It was the first time that he collaborated with Bill Cosby without also being featured in a leading role. The movie felt tailored to fit the family reputation that Cosby had gained through years of Fat Albert and The Cosby Show. (It was still a couple decades before the family persona would be shattered by the news that Cosby had been sexually abusing and raping women throughout his entire career.) The main difference was that his character in Ghost Dad seemed to care more about his job and spent the movie learning that his family was the most important thing, where Cliff Huxtable from The Cosby Show was a family man as much as anything else.

This, as well as the lack of a matriarch in the family, allowed a different side of Cosby to be seen by the people who were introduced to him through his family television shows. He got to play a slightly different character who had to become a family man, rather than a character who already was. It was a different shade of something familiar, something new enough for audiences to be interested in, while being similar to something that they already knew, giving them comfort. It was exactly what Cosby should have been doing in a movie at that time.

And sometimes it worked like gangbusters. There were moments where the comedy landed exceptionally well. There was a man introduced to help guide Elliot through his new ghostly life. The character was named Edith. The man pronounced the name “Ed-ith,” saying that it was a boy’s name. Everyone felt the need to point out that it was spelled the same as “Ee-dith,” a girl’s name, which frustrated him to no end. That worked. It got called back to throughout the movie.

Another thing that worked was an early gag where Elliot couldn’t speak properly in his ghost form because he was out of sync with himself. Nobody could hear him, so he had to telepathically try and interact with them. When he did that, it sounded pained, somewhere between a scream, a yawn, and a gargle. Things like that kept the movie afloat, making it watchable. The problem was that those elements were few and far between.

The rest of Ghost Dad was sprinkled with good jokes. On paper, that is. The ideas were humourous and interesting. The execution, however, was anything but. This could have come down to the direction of Sidney Poitier. It could have come down to the performance of Bill Cosby. It could have come down to the writing of the three screenwriters who worked on the film. Somewhere along the way, many of the amusing bits and pieces that made Ghost Dad a good idea fell apart. They didn’t land the way they should have. It made the movie a chore to get through.

One example was the early gag where the movie played with the audience’s expectations about when Elliot would become a ghost. The title was Ghost Dad. Of course he would become a ghost. Different near-death scenarios played out as Elliot neared his demise. He almost slipped on Amanda’s roller skate and fell down the stairs. He almost died in an elevator, where the cable snapped right after he left it. The problem was that the amount of time spent on these various gags was far too long. It felt like the movie took forever to get Elliot into his Ghost Dad state. There weren’t too many gags. It was played by the rule of threes, a classic comedic timing style. The problem was that each of them lasted too long in terms of storytelling. They took up too much screentime.

Bill Cosby was a slight problem as well. It wasn’t so much in his portrayal of the character. He did a fine job as a mostly absent father learning to care for his kids when he needs their help to help them. His facial expressions were a major problem. Something that should have been a serious moment, such as Elliot discovering he was a ghost, was ruined by a goofy facial expression, such as when a bus drove through Elliot and he realized he was going face first into a woman’s crotch. Many times, the expressions didn’t fit the tone of the scene or moment they were in, thus lessening the impact of important story beats.

Comedy might be a subjective thing, but there were reasons it didn’t quite stick in Ghost Dad. There was one other thing that took away from the movie as well, and that was the effects. The early 1990s effects didn’t quite manage to feel realistic. There were moments where some fun little camera tricks were used to make Elliot appear and disappear when lights were turned on and off. These were the same sort of tricks that were done in the short film Lights Out to great effect. But there were also other moments where Elliot had a bus go through him, or he fell through a door and into the floor, or he was thrown through the sky on a trip to England. Any moment where he interacted with the environment around him. These moments didn’t look good, breaking any sense of believability. Movies don’t always need to be realistic, but when they’re going for a grounded, family story with a ghostly twist, they should probably be able to stick the landing.

Sidney Poitier’s reunion with Bill Cosby wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There would have been some hype around it, with a screen duo reuniting after a decade and a half apart. But one of them didn’t appear on screen, and the movie was mired in comedy that never quite found its stride. There were some funny jokes on the page that never translated to the screen. The effects couldn’t support what the story required. And, thirty years out, what Bill Cosby did to all those women must be reconciled by the viewer. This may not have been the worst of that era of Cosby’s feature film career, but it certainly wasn’t a good example of his comedic talent.

Bill Cosby reached his second movie wind following the success of The Cosby Show. He decided to revive a film career that had flourished for him in the 1970s, following I Spy. With that came a reunion with Sidney Poitier, who had directed and starred in three films with him during that earlier run. It was television success begetting a film career and then more television success leading to another peak in a film career. Television was the stepping-stone that made films a possibility.

Many actors made the leap from television to feature films. That was the way things worked from the incarnation of television until relatively recently. It might be normal now to see a movie star take a chance to be in a television show for a season or two. But before the rise of cable channels and what people consider the golden age of television, work in television was considered beneath film. It was considered lesser than. It was considered a way to get to the bigger and better. And it brought us many a great movie star.

Now for some notes to close this thing out, and there are a lot of them:

• J.D. Hall did some acting work in Ghost Dad, after also being featured in Mac and Me (week 125), Jaws: The Revenge (week 240), and The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (week 380).
• David McCharen returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies. He was first in Monster in the Closet (week 55) and Jaws: The Revenge (week 240). Now he has been in Ghost Dad.
• Cathy Cavadini worked on Jaws: The Revenge (week 240), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (week 310), and Ghost Dad.
• Five actors from Jaws: The Revenge (week 240) were in Ghost Dad. They were Barbara Harris, Doris Hess, Kaleena Kiff, Cedric Scott, and LaGloria Scott.
• Arnold Stang made a memorable appearance in Ghost Dad. He was also in Hercules in New York (week 68).
• Denise Nicholas, from Blacula (week 82), was featured in Ghost Dad.
• Ghost Dad featured Donzaleigh Abernathy from Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood (week 120).
• Joseph Chapman and Christine Ebersole were both in Ghost Dad and Mac and Me (week 125).
• There was an actor named James McIntire in Road House (week 200) and Ghost Dad.
• Amy Hill made her second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Ghost Dad, after previously doing voice work in The Emoji Movie (week 373).
• Finally, Patrika Darbo was in The Search for Santa Paws (week 420) and Ghost Dad.
• Have you seen Ghost Dad? What did you think? Who are some of your favourite television stars turned film stars? Put your thoughts in the comments or connect with me on Twitter.
• You can find me on Twitter or in the comments if you want to share any suggestions about what movies I should be watching for Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m open to all suggestions and will likely toss them into the schedule at some point in the future.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram, if you want to check that out as well.
• Now for a little info about next week’s movie. Next week is Easter weekend, which meant that I was obviously going to tie something into that. Yes, it’s another religious film. It’s not any religious film, though. There’s some special stuff to this one. It features former Cheetah Girl member Adrienne Bailon. It features Fyre Fest founder Ja Rule. It features Stephen Baldwin, Michael Madsen, and Vincent Pastore. Christian musicians T-Bone and TobyMac also show up. So does retired football star Jerry Rice. I’ll be writing about I’m in Love with a Church Girl, and I hope you’ll come back for that. It should be a fun post. See you next week.