The Care Bears franchise has seen many feature-length movies, which tend to be quite dark and scary even for viewers older than their target audiences, and they were fun to watch. Journey to Joke-a-Lot is however none of that.
JTJAL was made to coincide with the 2003 relaunch of the Care Bears franchise which began with a new toyline from the company Play Along, and eventually, this movie came, which surprisingly enough was done by Nelvana, like they did with the other movies as well as the Care Bears Family television series.
The storyline resolves Funshine Bear running away from Care-a-Lot after one of his jokes goes wrong when the Carousel at the Care Bear Fair goes out of control, and finds himself in the world of Joke-a-Lot, where laughter, fun and jokes run galore. Here, Funshine meets a pig named Gig, and the villain of the movie, Sir Funnybone, who's main aim is to keep Funshine as the ruler of Joke-a-Lot forever because his tummy symbol is the main key to the secret jewels or something.
Overall, the story is pretty weak and uninteresting, and it's really padded out to fill out the movie's runtime of about 80 minutes, especially the really long scene where Funshine heads into the world of Joke-a-Lot on a roller coaster.
The CGI is a hit-or-miss. Even for 2004 it could have been better, especially with movies like The Incredibles coming out around that time, and what makes it worse is that the movie was produced on a $3 Million budget! They could have made the CGI look at least better than what it is!
The voice acting isn't that great. All the voices the voice actors give to the Bears just all sound the same, but the worst out of all of them has to be Grumpy Bear. He doesn't sound "deep" compared to how he sounds like in other Care Bears media, instead he has a high pitched whiny voice which completely unfits the character.
For characters, Funshine is easily the most unlikable character in the whole movie, especially with how mean-spirited the beginning is where he wrecks the carousel and completely insults Grumpy on his hard work by not taking the wreckage he caused very seriously. The villain, Sir Funnybone is boring and isn't even threatening at all, which is a problem later Care Bears material would also suffer from with their villains. I don't remember much of what he did other than trying to keep Funshine in Joke-a-Lot. Gig however, is likeable and kinda adorable too, although he doesn't fit in with the rest of the franchise.
The soundtrack is actually pretty decent, although it's sole purpose is to fill out the run-time of the movie. If you wanted to, you could just buy the soundtrack on it's own and listen to it like that instead.
Overall, this movie is not worth a watch, even for Care Bears fans like me, and unless you really do want to see it, don't bother watching this movie.
The sequel - The Care Bears Big Wish Movie, is a far better movie and is the one i'd rather recommend to you, but is still only meant to be for fans of the Care Bears, if you're not a fan of that one, don't bother ether.
