Eric’s Bad Movies: ‘The Care Bears Movie’ (1985)
It’s kind of fun to have Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com be thematically linked to one of the week’s new releases. If nothing else, it helps me choose subjects for the column, a process that would otherwise be fairly random. So this week, in vague conjunction with the new animated “Ice Age” movie hitting theaters, Eric’s Bad Movies deals with “The Care Bears Movie,” which hit theaters 24 years ago and became the most lucrative non-Disney animated feature up to that point. That wasn’t much of a feat, since hardly anyone besides Disney even tried animation in those days, but still.
I seem to be doing a lot of children’s movies lately in Eric’s Bad Movies at Film.com. That’s probably because so many children’s movies are awful. The people who make them seem to think that since kids are their target audience, that means the movies don’t have to make sense. Note that Michael Bay follows the same policy, and is rewarded for it. Michael Bay thinks of his fans the same way the makers of bad kids’ movies think of kids. Ponder that, “Transformers” defenders.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Very timely! My children just got this show from the library. It was the first time I’d seen it and I could hear my brain cells screaming. It was too scary for my 3yos.
Seriously awful. Very funny review…stockholm syndrome…funny
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
I’ve watch the episodes of the care Bears from 2007-don’t ask-and if it’s as goofy and super syrupy as the t.v. show than it isn’t for me.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:50 am
Mostly talked about the concept of the movie, not the movie.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Michael Bay’s movies are the way they are because he’s making them for people who never outgrew stuff like this.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
This review is one of the funniest yet, Eric! I laughed my eyes out (if you can imagine that – I can’t, though, and didn’t even see it, because of my eyes going out and stuff…). Looks like you were preparing this review for years, in revenge for all the evil the Care Bears brought to our lives…
Funniest of all, my wife had a burst of nostalgy and made me see part of this crap a couple of weeks ago. Then she moved on to harder stuff, like My Little Pony or She-Ra (yikes!!). I’m still all shaky and shivery…
By the way, would it be possible that I translated this review into Spanish, so I can share it with my friends (I’m Chilean, and so are most of my friends). I know they would also laugh their eyes or (beer)bellies or whatever they can laugh out, but I wanted to ask you first (copyright issues, you know). I wouldn’t like to be responsible for one of those anonymous mails containing your work.
Greetings from Rome!
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
The book scared the snot out of me when I was a kid…
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 pm
The Bad Movies thing has been an eh for me the whole time…I enjoyed reading them, I wait eagerly to see what poor fodder you’ll slaughter this week, but mostly I just read them in silence…though Mac and Me incited some giggles and Zardoz was funny. However, the Care Bears Movie review had me giggling like Mandar the entire way through. Sheesh, you hated that movie, didn’t you? Some unfeeling babysitter made me watch it when I was fourish, and I remember sort of liking it, then when we sat down to watch it the next day I was wondering what exactly I had liked about it. Since then, Care Bears have been on my list of small annoyances, and I never could understand what was so…appealing.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:45 am
Interestingly, this movie’s Associate Producer, Paul Pressler, was later hired by Disney (due to his “skillful” marketing of the Care Bears) and eventually became President of Disneyland. He brought Disney HUGE profits by:
Opening more shops in the parks
Cutting corners and outright neglecting park maintenance and upkeep (which actually lead to a guest’s death on Thunder Mt.!)
Scaled back budgets leading to the underwhelming Tommorowland refurbishment and the California Adventure Park.
Low-quality money-making endeavors seems to be this man’s forte.
Oh, and the singing in this movie SUCKS. They hired kids who couldn’t sing a NOTE!
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
You’ve got a typo: “they bears sing a song” should probably be “the bears”.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
that was awesome
July 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I’m pretty sure the “Care Other Animals” are called the “Care Bear Cousins.” If it’s weird that there are Care Bear babies, the fact that there are Care Bear Cousins bumps the creepy up a notch. But brilliant marketing – now everyone who already has all the Care Bears can spend more money on the Cousins.
My mom has this VHS tape, and two of my kids, ages 7 and 6, love watching it. I don’t know where I went wrong. Sigh.
July 5th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Wow. Ridiculously well written – could practically be a Snide Remarks
I saw the movie once as a teenage babysitter, and was similarly horrified at its satanic influences. But I had forgotten how much I loathed it until reading this. Thanks so much for reminding me…
July 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am
The jihad you described that didn’t actually take place was so damn funny…and the 1975 and above is appreciated to those of us that grew up on D&D, scooby-do, X-Men, Tom and Jerry and a road runner that was flatten to a bloody pulp…we don’t talk about our feelings
July 6th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Absolutely hilarious. I remember when I was 8 or 9 and this was first shown on TV; despite the fact that I wasn’t into Care Bears at the time, I forced my family to watch the whole thing during dinner. My older brothers have never forgiven me for that. I can still see their eyes practically rolling out of their heads while watching it. I still remember that whole satanic bit. I’m shocked my mother let me watch the whole thing.