Review of the animated film “The Canterville Ghost”

The animated film “The Canterville Ghost” by Kim Burdon and Robert Chandler was released. The new film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s story was put into production back in 2012, but has only now reached the screens. Along the way, the classic text underwent numerous changes, which, according to Yulia Shagelman, didn’t do him any good at all.

The main plot outline of “The Canterville Ghost” remained the same as in the story or, if you prefer, in the Soviet cartoon of 1970, memorable for older viewers. The American Otis family (here its head is not an ambassador, but an enthusiastic inventor) buys a castle in the English province, famous for the ghost of Sir Simon Canterville, who for three hundred years has been terrorizing the descendants of his noble family, servants and, in general, anyone who has the imprudence to wander into the estate . He tries to do this with the newcomers, but the practical people from the New World, accustomed to believing in science and progress, cannot be taken so easily: after hearing the clanking of chains, they offer the ghost to lubricate them with the latest product; Mrs. Otis herself frightens him when he sees her with cosmetics. with a mask on his face (there was no such episode in the original source, but it fits well into his style), and the hooligan twin brothers really harass him. And only their older sister Virginia, who, in accordance with the trends of the times, has turned from a romantic young lady into a very independent and independent person, manages to make friends with the unfortunate Sir Simon.

It is clear that even for a short film – The Canterville Ghost is only 84 minutes long – this will not be enough. Therefore, the authors mercilessly stretch out every gag and joke, and also come up with new ones, mostly not funny at all. So, instead of quietly coming to terms with the fact that the Otises are not afraid of him at all, and only unsuccessfully repairing the “bloody” stain in the living room with paints stolen from Virginia, Sir Simon decides to take revenge on them and, during a dinner party in the castle, starts a fire in which barely The Duke of Cheshire, in love with Virginia, does not die. Yes, the heroine here was made old enough for her to have a fan, with whom you can spend some more time on dull skirmishes.

Completely new characters also appear – a priest and his wife, obsessed with everything paranormal, who fancies herself a real ghost hunter. The latter provides a few more comic reprises, chasing Sir Simon with a device clearly borrowed by the authors from Ivan Reitman’s “Ghostbusters” – a condescending critic would probably call it an homage.

Unfortunately, the animation in the film is so clunky, and the characters look so wooden and lifeless (perhaps it’s because technology has advanced so much in the ten years of making the film) that watching all this running around is not very interesting. The voice acting doesn’t add any charm to the characters: if in the original they speak with the voices of the superstars of the British acting school – Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, Toby Jones, then here they were replaced by Garik Kharlamov, Marina Fedunkiv and unknown dubbing workers.

The authors themselves seem to have not quite decided what their film is about. Wilde’s story was a witty vignette about the clash between American materialism and moribund Old World romanticism, but the theme has lost relevance in the intervening nearly 140 years and has little appeal to children’s audiences. The team of three screenwriters especially did not dare to repeat the charming, but now almost criminal, Wilde jokes that Sir Simon killed his wife because she was a poor cook and starched her collars. Therefore, they reinvented the story in the Hollywood-Disney spirit: their ghost turns out to be an innocent victim of bad people, and the energetic heroine, Virginia, restores justice. At the same time, in the finale, the rough humor is suddenly replaced by a completely Victorian melancholy. Perhaps Oscar Wilde would not have objected to such a turn, but it is unlikely – in such a performance.