Reviews

I'm a director, author and screenwriter. I take teams of mostly teenagers out on production to haunted places around the country. Some of those places are without a doubt really scary around midnight or early hours of the darkness. Most of these kids are braver than a lot of adults I know.

Like everyone else I was fooled by the promotional for Blair Witch so I watched it. I laughed nearly all the way through it. Without a doubt one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The writer could have written this screenplay in a few minutes without much thought at all but the PR work is what I find impressive.

The writer did not follow the rules of plot construction. No one ever saw what was killing the students. I've always been one to bend the rules but never to throw them away completely. The audience should have some idea who the antagonist is somewhere in the first 15-20 min of the movie. So they talk about the evil witch but no one ever sees her through the entire movie. Another general rule is the evil should be vanquished. The worse the crime the worse the punishment otherwise there is no viewer satisfaction at the end of the movie. The only people who were punished in this movie were the viewers who paid to see it. A good movie should leave the viewer with some sense of satisfaction but this movie leaves the viewer with unresolved emotions. Like seeing the food but not being able to eat it.

Sometimes the writer instructor will ask students to write a bad movie screenplay so they can see why it doesn't work. But the Blair Witch group wrote a bad movie script and through their PR proved it did work, at least once. At some point in a student's life they like to prove their instructor wrong at least once.

I do admire the fact that a movie can be made for around $8,000 and bring in more than $140,000,000. But it sends the wrong signal to producers all over the world telling them to buy bad movie scripts. Believe me that's 90+% of what Hollywood is doing these days.

I could turn my kids and some of their friends loose in the woods with a video camera or two and I'm sure they could do at least as well if not better, without a script, than the Blair Witch cast and crew did with one. And I'll bet they could do it for around $1,000. You might think this is all pretty amazing but have you checked to see there were a few attempts to get on the Blair Witch band wagon, producers trying to make look alikes and they failed big time. Evidently the magic only worked once. The people wised up and won't fall for Blair Witch type PR tricks again. This tells you the majority of the people who saw it didn't like it and wouldn't do that again.

I'm glad the cast and crew of the Blair Witch project did well in their effort to fool the public. I'm glad they made a great deal of money for a very little investment. But to me the movie was a comedy not a horror movie. And it was poorly done. It takes a master PR person or someone with the gift to turn a looser like this into a winner but they did it with style. If someone asks I will tell them "Sure watch it. Decide for yourself if you like it or not."

Being an author, director and screenwriter myself I can't just watch a movie without automatically looking for flaws in them. If there's a hole in it I'll most likely find it. I read novels and screenplays over and over again then study the movies along with the scripts to see what is right and what's not. How the target audience reacts to movies is also important in my business. I would be happy to have Hillary Duff star in one of my screenplays. She's the right age, has the right look and the talent to star in the series I'm working on now.

I had a fun time reading all the reviews for this movie. I can't help but wonder why adults who hated this movie would bother to set through it let alone write lengthy reviews using highly colorful & hateful terms. If you don't like kiddy movies don't watch them. Intelligent people wouldn't set through something they hated with a passion unless they were deliberately trying to find fault with it or the staring actors.

Hillary Duff gets "hate" messages from people who are jealous of her all the time. In fact she gets so much of it she's stopped communicating with most of her fans because of it. It doesn't help anyone, not her, not her fans, not the people who hate her either. It just puts more distance between the fans and the actors/actresses and that's completely uncalled for. Either you like the movie or the actors or you don't. I have a list I don't care much for either but I'm not going to waste my time using colorful metaphors talking about them.

Hillary is one of the sweetest kids you will ever see. She's cute, honest, and when she smiles her entire face glows. My daughter Kristy (15)was watching the Lizzy McGuire movie and said she would like to meet Hillary because she thought that she would be a nice person. I would love for her to have the opportunity to meet Hillary and her mother.

Hillary was literally thrown into the acting business after doing a commercial or two. Before that she sang and danced. She was in fact very inexperienced when she did Casper Meets Wendy. If you understand the circumstances you should realize that with no more experience than she had at that time she did a fantastic job in this movie. The KIDS loved her!

Casper Meets Wendy isn't a typical Casper movie. The first Casper movie was by far more aimed at the general audience. Overall it was the best of all three for adults and young people alike. A Spirited Beginning was aimed more for the children and Casper Meets Wendy was aimed for the younger children. Of course it was also intended to have a simple plot that anyone could understand including little children. It's a feel good movie. It is not a horror story about a scary ghost or witch. It's for the young and young at heart.

For those people who really love to watch bad movies so they can hate them I have list they might like. ;-) You could start with "The Polish Vampire in Burbank" and move on to "Behind the Green Door" just for starters. I find it frustrating to turn the TV on and have 300 or so channels with nothing worth watching. But that's how the movie and TV shows are these days. I can't help but wonder if it is a lack of good scripts or if the producers just can't recognize a good script from a bad one. When a movie as bad as The Blair Witch, made by students on a budget of $8000 can turn a profit of more than $140,000,000 that's sad business. When people pay to see bad movies it sends the wrong signal to every producer in Hollywood. I have no doubt my kids could make a better movie than that.

Casper meets Wendy is a feel good movie and if you liked the comics of these characters you should like the movie. The acting and gags are geared for a kiddy flick and they accomplish exactly what the director wanted them to.