Ghost Cat (2003/2009)

by | Sep 26, 2009 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews | 0 comments

Ghost Cat (2003/2009)

Starring Ellen Page, Shirley Knight 
Studio: Animal Planet/NAMP Motion Pictures [Release date: Sept. 22, 09]
Video: 16:9 color
Audio: English PCM stereo
Subtitles: Closed captions
Extras: Stills gallery
Length: 90 minutes
Rating: ****

This fine family drama was featured on Animal Planet at Halloween and has now made it to DVD due to the splash a now-grown-up Ellen Page has made in Juno and Whip It!.  It should have wide appeal to anyone interested both in cats and the supernatural, and for the squeamish I can reveal that nobody gets killed in the making of this movie.

Page plays a 14-year-old who moves into a new house with her widowed father 40 miles from their New York City home.  At first the house has a For Sale sign put up by the overzealous nephew of the retired librarian who lives there with her faithful cat Margaret, and the father and daughter check it out and like it. But the old lady has no intention of selling her house. She also had been a friend of the late mother of the young girl, who had lived in the town and also worked at the library. On their next visit to the small town, the father and daughter find that the librarian as well as her cat have both died and the house is available, so they move in.

The no-good nephew wants to find $50,000 that his aunt may have secreted somewhere in the house, and a neighbor is being harassed by a real estate developer who wants to get her farm where  she operates an animal shelter. The two baddies eventually conspire to do very bad things, but Margaret the ghost cat saves the day when Ellen, her friend and all the shelter animals are put in great peril. One can see how this feature got on the Animal Planet channel, but it is also about belief and courage.  [Ghost Cat is also available on Blu-ray, which wasn’t provided for review.]

 – John Sunier

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