El secreto de los fantasmas

this movie exemplifies the captivating adventure a ridiculous ghost/beast to can add to a somewhat atrocious plot. this ghost is a recipe for fun and comedy as jason lively and friends search for the MILLIONS. as this high-tailed hilarity becomes almost unbearable, this fun loving ghost materializes and just about makes you choke on your own laughter. fun for children and senior citizens, but not middle aged soccer moms. what makes this even better.....jason lively is the pompous idiot from european vacation, only now he has a mullet! pure casting genius! amen.

"Ghost Chase" was an early effort by director Roland Emmerich before he moved onto big-budget Hollywood movies, and when he was turning out German-financed movies derivative of famous Hollywood movies. While this movie isn't as derivative as some of his other movies made at this time, you can still see influences, ranging from "Halloween" to "E.T." Actually, this unoriginality is one of the lesser problems I had with this movie. It's a pretty cheap-looking movie, for one thing, with poor cinematography and lighting. Much of the dialogue seems post-dubbed, and many of the special effects are tacky. And they apparently couldn't afford a decent-sounding musical score. But most of the blame falls on Emmerich's direction and script. Emmerich doesn't seem to know how to stage scenes many times (look at how the bicycle crash and the overpouring of coffee in a mug is filmed.) The script almost seems to have been written as the movie was filmed, with the plot taking forever to get going and then progressing at a sluggish pace when it's not being confusing. If you hate Emmerich's major Hollywood studio movies, take a look at this, and you'll see what real bad movie making is like.

This movie had a weird feel to it - I loved it - the 80's feel and music, the lovable Lewis - several of the reviewers got the plot wrong - it was fast paced - didn't leave you bored in places, waiting for the movie to pick up again. I felt the acting was quite good - the lead actors were just plain old kids, they had ambition, wanted to make their dream of movie-making come true, and had to figure out how to finance it. The ghost was an additional problem suddenly thrown into the mix - I loved the sets - the gadgets -

Very fast-paced 80's movie - just plain fun. Sometimes the acting was a bit bad - but overall, a lot of frenzied fun - some great scenes - such as the automated stuff that is rigged up to do some of the chores in the morning. The animation was pretty good for the 80's, the characters were interesting, though a bit over-acted a time or two. I always love interesting concepts, and great film sets. Plus when films like this are a bit low-budget, to see what they did with what they had is pretty cool. I wouldn't have minded a sequel to this movie. One I will occasionally watch for a guilty pleasure.

It's weird how the writer/director of such exciting blockbusters such as ID4 and The Patriot could create such a strange film. I'll try my hardest to recount the plot.

Two ultra-cheap filmmakers (art reflects life) have a great idea for a movie and rope in an unwilling but attractive starlet and make up a Muppet-like monster based on the photographs of a long-dead grandfather's butler. A rival studio producer wants to blow up the grandfather's house as the climax to his big budget movie so the butler's ghost comes back to possess the Muppet doll to lead them to hidden billions in the cellar.

It's not a bad film, by no means, it's quite cringe-worthy in places but inconsistently entertaining. There are no big name stars or SFX but that is made up for with bizarre plotting and storyline.

This film is more in the style of Roland Emmerich in his Making Contact/Moon 44 days. But if he had the budget he gets these days who knows what this film might have ended up as. I give it 6/10 for weirdness, plot and defying convention.