This is a fun family movie, but the plot isn't solid. This movie left me with a lot of questions. What was up with the cab driver and who does he think he is? Why did Stuart threaten his best friend's father? That's pretty bold of him to do that. Why at one point, could Elliot talk weird in one part and talk normal in another? Also when the company comes over to visit, it's day time, and some minutes later, when Stuart calls, Elliot went to his house and the sun was already down long ago. That reminds me, if Stuart threatened me like that, he would have his bratty self have the police called on. And, not all was resolved in the end. Elliot lost his job, Danny lost a friend of his, and Diane lost a potential boyfriend. Still, nevertheless, Elliot's extremist and eccentric behavior was definitely funny. Though plagued by errors, this makes for a good family film and is better than Home Alone 4.

Right off the bat, I'm admitting that I was never really into Bill Cosby. He just seemed kind of boring and didn't have much identity. I was at least familiar with his awful movie record. Nowadays, everybody wants to distant themselves from him, but I'm not going to judge the movie based on that. I'm just going to treat it like a movie. This film features Bill Cosby apparently becoming a ghost. This movie is just really dumb with the rules it has about the afterlife. It's said that people can see Cosby's clothes but not his face but we clearly see him with clothes on in one scene and nobody notices him!

Also, this one guy says he's an authority on the afterlife and has even written a book. Wait, if there's a book written about ghosts, why can't they just tell everyone that he's a ghost? Ghosts have already been said to exist in this world. Better yet, just tell people you're a ghost and get rich and famous proving ghosts exist! This film is very mean spirited with Cosby running into a crazy Satanist who then convinces him that he's Satan. He later chokes a kid through the phone and threatens a little boy. I really do hate it when people make ugly, hateful films for children. *1/2

I believe that this is the film that the video store customer returned, claiming "I just love Bill Cosby pictures" before she was beaten to death by a huge leg of some animal from her refrigerator by Kathleen Turner in "Serial Mom". It was director John Waters' slam on the Coz's film career, unsuccessful in spite of his long running situation comedy. As directed by his old pal Sidney Poitier whom he started with in some successful '70s action comedies, this had several things going for it even though it didn't deliver as a big screen comedy. It was a big disaster so I wasn't really expecting to laugh or like anything about it. In fact, I didn't think that I'd even make it half an hour into the film. But the film got my attention with its suspense of how his character of the neglectful widowed father would die, and the first 20 minutes of the movie had me hooked.

If this film had been made in the '60s or '70s, it obviously would have starred Jerry Lewis. That occurred to me with some of the antics that Cosby does, his schtick always having been Jerry Lewis like with funny faces and comical voices, but where the humor comes from is from the situations, not from the mind of a show-off. That kind of comedy can only make people laugh so much which is why I suppose his films did not do well because it was him dominating every moment, not sharing with an ensemble which was the reason for his success on TV.

Is this film really as bad as it is said to be? In my opinion, not really, but it certainly isn't original. The idea of a ghost having something they need to finish in their life has been done on screen since the days of the silent era. Ian Bannen is his sophisticated after life rep, Sir Edith Moser, a joke that is funny the first 10 times but gets tired after a while. For some reason, his kids are able to see their dead dad in all sorts of wacky ways, trying to wrap up there relationship and leave everybody at peace. There are certain ways of interesting, well intended ideas, but they are not executed in a way that works. "Beetlejuice" this isn't. It's a missed opportunity that suffers from a weak script and probably far too much sentiment.v.