Bill Cosby stars as a widowed executive trying to raise his kids and, at the same time, make a big business deal that will get him a promotion, which includes life insurance benefits. After narrowly avoiding a number of life-threatening accidents, Elliot Hopper (Cosby) takes a cab that
speeds off a high bridge. Although he escapes the accident, Elliot discovers that people can't see or hear him; he's a ghost. However, when he returns home, Elliot learns that he can be seen if there is no bright light around, and that he can be heard and take on a corporeal solidity if he
concentrates. What's more, because of some screw-ups in Heaven, Elliot still has some time left on Earth--long enough, he hopes, to wind up his big deal. The next day, after cleverly passing a physical exam for the life insurance policy, Elliot rides to school with eldest daughter, Diane (Kimberly
Russell). There he tosses Tony (Dana Ashbrook), the object of Diane's romantic dreams, out of the car. Mortified by her ghostly father's actions, Diane argues with Elliot all the way home, catching the eye of Stuart (Omar Gooding), an evil yuppie neighbor. All at once, Elliot is forced to deal
with an array of new problems. Not only do his girl friend, Joan (Nicholas), and his business partners and kids feel neglected, but Gooding hatches a blackmail scheme. As if all of this weren't enough, Tony telephones repeatedly to complain about being tossed from the car. The next morning, Elliot
leaves a major business meeting to save his son, Danny (Salim Grant), from an embarrassing situation at school. Of course, Elliot is fired, but that night he realizes that his body is still alive; if he can just find it in time, he can return to life. While everyone is searching for Elliot's body,
Diane has a bad accident. In the emergency room, Diane's spirit leaves her body. However, she thoroughly enjoys the freedom of her new state, despite Elliot's orders to get back into her body. But while flying away from her father, Diane discovers his body, to which Elliot returns. When Diane's
spirit and body are reunited, the whole family is together again.
Take TV's favorite father, add Hollywood's recent affection for special-effects comedy, and the result is a film whose attempt to capitalize on two good things is embarrassingly blatant. Had the makers of GHOST DAD taken the film's premise a bit farther--perhaps emphasizing that a father who's
never home is pretty ghostlike to begin with--this might have been a charming, clever little movie. Instead, screenwriters Chris Reese, Brent Maddock, and S.S. Wilson and director Sidney Poitier have ended up with a bland, fairly empty exercise in professionalism. To be sure, there are lots of
clever ideas in the movie, and the performances are uniformly excellent, but GHOST DAD is too unfocused for us to really care about any of it. Even Elliot's ghostly state is never satisfactorily explained (Why, for example, does he have a problem with blinking on and off near the end of the
film?).
Rather than undertake any kind of exploration of the difficulties encountered by African-American executives in white-run corporations, GHOST DAD is content to trade in silly political jokes and toilet humor, a feeble attempt to woo an older crowd that succeeds only in sullying an otherwise
squeaky-clean movie. In his television shows, his books, and his many records, Cosby has always evinced a core sincerity that has lifted his work above that of other comedians who mine similarly G-rated material. However, on the big screen Cosby's heartfelt decency continues to come across as
blandness.
In a sense, Poitier is an even greater disappointment. Here, as in the other films he has directed (including UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT; LET'S DO IT AGAIN; STIR CRAZY), he shows himself to be a most competent director. But when are his directorial efforts going to demonstrate the passion that has made
his work as an actor so brilliant? There's nothing really wrong with GHOST DAD. It just seems that two of the most important African-American entertainers of the last half-century could have come up with something a little more exciting. leave a comment
