“Magic isn’t the answer, Nicholas. Your feelings can help you find the TRUE answer!”

Justin’s rating: This movie made me feel dead inside

Justin’s Review: If you’re a dedicated movie-watcher, then sooner or later the onslaught of completely mediocre films gets to you, threatening to extract your mortal soul and replace it with mostly bubble wrap. To counter this looming doom, I find that I either have to place my hand on a hot stove literally, or do so figuratively by picking a movie that I know will really, really stink and forcing myself through it. It’s cathartic through the pain — and this way I avoid joining the whole safety pins-through-random-patches-of-skin crowd that keeps sending me flyers to join them.

It’s for this reason, and not any lost sense of nostalgia, that I delighted in putting The Care Bears Movie into my Netfix rental queue. I knew it was going to bite, and bite hard. And I just couldn’t wait to see it. Fellow Mutants Alex and PoolMan both expressed their concerns upon hearing my excited gibbering about the Second Coming Of Care Bears, but after a few thrifty court orders, they’re now spending seven to nine in solitary. Which leaves me alone with the blissful rainbow-colored pain found here.

The Care Bears were an eighties cartoon-and-toy-line, strictly following the eighties credo of “Be Brightly Colored, And Make No Sense” (also see Rainbow Bright, Strawberry Shortcake, and My Little Pony) Those of you who have passing knowledge of the Care Bears, please back me up when uninitiated readers come to me sputtering that I have gotten to the point where I’m just making stuff up. I’m not; this is how it goes.

The Care Bears are colorful bears with various tattoos on their tummies, these tattoos dictating their sole personality trait and power. What power? Why, to forcibly inject someone with a particular emotion! So Grumpy Bear can only force people to be Grumpy, Nervous Twitch Bear can only strong-arm kids into jittering their legs, etc.

While most bear species are firmly land-dwellers, the Care Bears take more to clouds. They have a cloud city (reclaimed when Lando got cold feet and abandoned it) called “Care-A-Lot” complete with cloud houses and cloud cars. They also seem to be able to use stars without being incinerated by the thermonuclear radiation and heat. I’m not exactly certain what the Care Bears do all day, except they seem to spend a heckuva lot of time looking through telescopes at small children to see if any of them need “help.” I don’t know about you, but if I’m an eight year-old and I discover that pantless bears are peeping in on me at all hours, I’m joining the Boy Scouts pronto and picking up that Marksmanship merit badge.

As the movie opens, the Care Bears have been stalking a few kids who don’t have friends. Picking these young ‘uns as vulnerable bait, they come down to make “contact” and play a quick game of emotional manipulation. After about the third or fourth minute of various Bears giggling and playing with rainbows and gushing on and ON and ON about how wonderful emotions and friends are… well, it’s hunting season, and Justin needs a new bear skin rug to go by the fire.

By minute 11, the Care Bears have kidnapped two kids who want nothing to do with the Care Bears. But the Care Bears refuse to let them go until they’ve been hugged enough to be converted into friends. I don’t care what religion or philosophy you might think is pushy in trying to bring you over to their way of thinking — the Care Bears are far pushier. Their hearts and rainbows cover up a Nazi regime of smiling terror.

Nicholas, a down-and-out magician’s nephew, buys into a talking magic book that gives him power in exchange for draining the world of caring. Win-win, I say. A Care Bear tries to convince Nick of his folly, but Nick knows that controlling magic is a mite bit better than paying a furry psychiatrist hourly bills for the next twenty years.

Many songs, packs of worn crayons, and a heretical belief in the power of tummy feelings later, the Care Bears restore their mandatory “caring” upon the whole earth. It’s a shame they did, really. Otherwise I wouldn’t be caring about how sugary-awful this movie is.

So what is the message that The Care Bears Movie is trying to pass onto the children of the world? I’m not exactly sure, but it may be something like this: “Hey kids! If you’re ever being stalked by effeminate ‘Bears’ that have been spying on you for some time, know a lot of personal details about your life, desire to control your emotions, and claim to want to be your ‘friend’, then, heck, just go with them. Worst thing that’ll happen is you’ll end up in a cloud village, eating cloud cakes and skipping over rainbows. Promise!”

Didja Notice?

• Starting the movie with a prayer? How dare these cartoons find religion!
• What kind of child labor camp is this? Just one room for eight kids?
• These kids look positively hooked on Prozac
• Oh, count the rainbows. This could be a very nasty drinking game.
• All of the Carebears keep standing with their feet turned inwards
• Oh no! The Care-O-Meter’s dropping! Well, New Yorkers must be getting out of bed.
• You can type “Care Bears” with only the fingers on your left hand (if you’re typing correctly)