Care Bears: Journey to Joke-a-Lot

Just for the record, I don't hate the Care Bears. By all means I'm not a huge fan, but I do think some of the hate the franchise and characters garner do verge on unfair. Although I loved the 1980s show and the original movie, and enjoyed New Generation, Wonderland and Nutcracker, I found myself disliking Journey to Joke-a-Lot. It seemed cute on paper and the character of Gig certainly is so. But the jerky character designs and lurid colour schemes make the film visually unappealing, while the score lacks whimsy and apart from a couple of delightful ones the songs are mostly limp with uninspiring lyrics. The script is a very uneven mix of weakly-done silly and sweet moments, Funshine's coronation speech is one of the, perhaps even the, worst single scenes of anything to do with Care Bears. The story is structurally thin, some scenes such as most of the songs and the middle are little more than lazy filler and the messages are handled in a very heavy-handed way. The characters are not the simple and charming ones from especially the 1980s, the villains are completely insipid, Funshine is now a bully and Grumpy is an utter wimp here. The voice work is terrible sadly too, too high in pitch with next to no subtlety and it also sounded as though they had been recorded in a helium balloon. All in all, a poor movie and a bland one. 2/10 Bethany Cox