Ghost Dad

To call "Ghost Dad" a "family" movie is a bit of an exaggeration. It's more of a "children's" movie. There's a difference.

This is a movie to send your kids to, as opposed to taking them.

To be fair, my younger children — ages 7 through 12 — enjoyed "Ghost Dad." But their parents and older brother were less enthusiastic.

This is one of those movies where the title tells all — especially when you know Bill Cosby plays the title character. "Ghost Dad" is very much like a made-for-TV movie — and if Cosby were not the star you can bet this picture would be a straight-to-video item.

Cosby's character is a widower workaholic whose three kids are raising themselves. And he has a deadline. Within a few days he must close an important business deal in order to leave his children financially secure. But, as you've no doubt guessed, Cosby dies before that deadline is reached.

Or does he?

He actually finds himself in some sort of limbo between heaven and earth and is given a little time to straighten things out before his actual death. But he returns to earth as a ghost, floating in the air, walking through walls and, with the help of his children, trying to close that business deal. He also interferes in his teenage daughter's love life, ignore's his son who asks for help with a school project, and inadvertently shuns the beautiful neighbor he's been dating.

The script is incredibly contrived with oddball elements that make little or no sense — as when Cosby is spirited away to London where he gets spiritual instruction from a scientist somehow in charge of those who die but don't die. And able supporting players like Ian Bannen as the British scientist and Barry Corbin as Cosby's boss are reduced to yelling a lot. (Although cabbie Raynor Scheine gets some solid laughs.)

Cosby tries hard to bring some life to all this, mugging, pratfalling and generally attempting an old-fashioned kind of comedy we don't see too often anymore. Well-done slapstick is never outdated, but as directed by Sidney Poitier — whose best directing efforts, oddly enough, were his three mid-'70s comedies with Cosby — this material never goes beyond one-note special-effects spoofery.

The press kit says the film is "in the tradition of Buster Keaton." It's more like Don Knotts.

All the characters are cardboard cutouts, the sentimental moments between pratfalls are very strained and even the special effects are sometimes gratuitous — as when Cosby is sitting on a lamp while talking to his daughter, then suddenly disappears and reappears in other parts of the room for no particular reason.

I hope when this movie makes considerably less money than "Another 48HRS." — which is inevitable — that Cosby doesn't get the notion that people care less about "clean" comedy than foul-mouthed comedy.

If "Ghost Dad" was funny as well as clean, it would have a better shot.

I also felt it was kind of odd that in a movie directed by and starring two such powerful black stars as Poitier and Cosby, there are so many white characters — particularly in positions of authority. None of Cosby's corporate associates — from superiors to underlings — is black.

The saving grace here, of course, is that no matter how bad "Ghost Dad" turned out to be, it could never approach the depths of awfulness Cosby's last film achieved — "Leonard Part 6."

Faint praise, I know, but "Ghost Dad" is a step up. So perhaps Cosby's next theatrical effort will be a step up from this one.

"Ghost Dad" is rated PG for a couple of mild profanities, some sexual innuendo and mildly vulgar jokes.