The late-40s to the early/mid-50s Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons had a higher budget and overall the overall quality was much better. Onwards, the quality did diminish quite significantly though the overall cartoons varied, some decent, many mediocre.
Famous Studios' cartoons are not for all tastes, but my opinion is that their early stuff and some of the early 50s output are good. While they were very formulaic they were always well animated and voiced with some funny parts, some poignancy and decent characters and their regular composer Winston Sharples could always be relied on to write a great and often outstanding score.
Admittedly though, by the mid-50s through to the late-60s Famous Studios' cartoons did get repetitive. While Sharples' music still shone and the voice actors did their best the animation suffered due to lower budgets and tighter deadlines, the humour became more tired and slow in timing than sharp and funny, the stories became increasingly predictable and rehashed and some characters started losing their initial spark, this is particularly true of most of the later Herman and Katnip cartoons.
After 'Boo Moon' (the last great Casper cartoons), many of the Casper cartoons were at best average, compensated by mainly the always outstanding music but hampered by being too twee and repetitive primarily and by the noticeably lower budget. 'Doing What's Fright' is not a bad cartoon and there are far worse Casper cartoons. However, 'Hide and Shriek' and 'Hooky Spooky' were much better collaborations with Spooky, although Spooky (as part of the character evolution process one can guess) is funnier here and where the somewhat sporadic humour is most successful.
Best things about 'Doing What's Fright' are the music score and Spooky. Winston Sharples' music score here is typically merry and whimsical, it's beautifully orchestrated, energetic and adds so much to the mood, his music has always been one of the best assets of the Famous Studios cartoons and it's not an exception here. In fact how it's composed and how it meshes so well with everything going on in the animation, story and action contributes to it being the best thing about the cartoon.
Spooky is much closer to the amusing, scene-stealing character in 'Which is Witch' (meant to be Witch Wendy's debut that managed to waste her) than when he first appeared, and was irritating somewhat, in 'Hide and Shriek' and 'Hooky Spooky'. He's not too badly designed and voiced with a lot of enthusiasm by Jack Mercer.
Casper is nice enough most of the time, and he and Spooky have great chemistry. The voice acting is fine, and there are a few moments that amuse if not much more than that.
Not everything works. The story is again very repetitive, not the typical solo Casper story but very typical of the Casper/Spooky collaborations, and done with more inspiration and less tiredness elsewhere. Humour is just sporadic, and generally there isn't enough that's consistently funny or spooky. The dialogue is cloying and also forgettable at best.
While one understands Casper's actions in teaching Spooky a lesson (who wouldn't) to me they do go against what he stands for (to be friendly and kind), meaning he does come across as out of character and mean and that he comes close to taking things a little too far. The animation is not much better, and fairly typical of the visuals betraying lower budgets and tighter deadlines. Much of it lacks vibrancy, the backgrounds have lost their meticulousness and the characters look hastily drawn and the overall drawing scrappy, apart from Spooky somewhat.
On the whole, not bad, not great. 6/10 Bethany Cox
Famous Studios' cartoons are not for all tastes, but my opinion is that their early stuff and some of the early 50s output are good. While they were very formulaic they were always well animated and voiced with some funny parts, some poignancy and decent characters and their regular composer Winston Sharples could always be relied on to write a great and often outstanding score.
Admittedly though, by the mid-50s through to the late-60s Famous Studios' cartoons did get repetitive. While Sharples' music still shone and the voice actors did their best the animation suffered due to lower budgets and tighter deadlines, the humour became more tired and slow in timing than sharp and funny, the stories became increasingly predictable and rehashed and some characters started losing their initial spark, this is particularly true of most of the later Herman and Katnip cartoons.
After 'Boo Moon' (the last great Casper cartoons), many of the Casper cartoons were at best average, compensated by mainly the always outstanding music but hampered by being too twee and repetitive primarily and by the noticeably lower budget. 'Doing What's Fright' is not a bad cartoon and there are far worse Casper cartoons. However, 'Hide and Shriek' and 'Hooky Spooky' were much better collaborations with Spooky, although Spooky (as part of the character evolution process one can guess) is funnier here and where the somewhat sporadic humour is most successful.
Best things about 'Doing What's Fright' are the music score and Spooky. Winston Sharples' music score here is typically merry and whimsical, it's beautifully orchestrated, energetic and adds so much to the mood, his music has always been one of the best assets of the Famous Studios cartoons and it's not an exception here. In fact how it's composed and how it meshes so well with everything going on in the animation, story and action contributes to it being the best thing about the cartoon.
Spooky is much closer to the amusing, scene-stealing character in 'Which is Witch' (meant to be Witch Wendy's debut that managed to waste her) than when he first appeared, and was irritating somewhat, in 'Hide and Shriek' and 'Hooky Spooky'. He's not too badly designed and voiced with a lot of enthusiasm by Jack Mercer.
Casper is nice enough most of the time, and he and Spooky have great chemistry. The voice acting is fine, and there are a few moments that amuse if not much more than that.
Not everything works. The story is again very repetitive, not the typical solo Casper story but very typical of the Casper/Spooky collaborations, and done with more inspiration and less tiredness elsewhere. Humour is just sporadic, and generally there isn't enough that's consistently funny or spooky. The dialogue is cloying and also forgettable at best.
While one understands Casper's actions in teaching Spooky a lesson (who wouldn't) to me they do go against what he stands for (to be friendly and kind), meaning he does come across as out of character and mean and that he comes close to taking things a little too far. The animation is not much better, and fairly typical of the visuals betraying lower budgets and tighter deadlines. Much of it lacks vibrancy, the backgrounds have lost their meticulousness and the characters look hastily drawn and the overall drawing scrappy, apart from Spooky somewhat.
On the whole, not bad, not great. 6/10 Bethany Cox
