The Care Bears Movie - Review (Part 2)

Welcome back, my beautiful fairies! We went over the history of the Care Bears in the first part of this review, but now we move onto overlooking the entire movie.

The Care Bears Movie, as stated, is a Canadian animated musical adventure released by Nelvana in 1985, directed by Arna Selznick and produced by all three of Nelvana’s original founders (Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert, Clive A. Smith). Despite the laughable premise of being based on a collection of greeting cards and teddy bears, the film had the last laugh. It went on to be the highest-grossing Canadian film in 1985, winning over $34 million worldwide and also winning a Golden Reel Award. The film's success, which saved Nelvana from closing, helped revive films aimed at children in the Canadian and American markets in a time where even Disney was losing its luster. The movie was written by Toronto-based children’s writer Peter Sauder. While he’s written a great deal of Canadian children’s media, including some Strawberry Shortcake and Babar specials, he actually was the series head writer for quite a few iconic shows. His credits as a series head writer include:

• Tales from the Cryptkeeper
• The Neverending Story
• Blazing Dragons
• Donkey Kong Country
• Dog City
• Star Wars: Droids
• Inspector Gadget

Now with all that rabble out of the way, it’s time to actually begin this retrospective. Again, as per typical of my reviews, I will be providing a link to the movie itself so you can watch and form your own opinions without taking mine as holy text. You can either watch it first, watch it after, or watch it as you read. The full movie is available on Youtube, Tubi, AppleTV, and (for free) The Internet Archive. I will be linking the movie right here. Now, let’s review!

The movie begins in what I like to call “drunk whimsy”, where something it’s so cutesy that the movie becomes tipsy in a whimsical aura. We open up on an orphanage run by a man named Mr. Cherrywood (played by Mickey Rooney). He decides to tell a story to the kids in his care about magical sky ursines named the Care Bears. And according to the lyrics of the credits’ soothing opening song, “Care-a-Lot” is a feeling apparently. If we want to go to Care-a-Lot, we have to look in our hearts. And if it’s not there, we’re not trying hard enough. I guess you could say this movie is the “bear minimum effort”.

Apparently they offer free blow jobs in Care-a-Lot.

All joking aside, the introduction is perfectly serviceable: introducing the bears and their world without dialogue isn’t a bad idea for an intro, and the song itself is fine for what it is. The animation and music is all well-done, and nothing’s outrageously offensive so far. Right now, the Care Bears are watching two orphan kids walking by themselves named Kim and Jason (played by soon-to-be legendary voice actress Cree Summer Francks and Sunny Besen Thrasher). They never say their parents are dead, so there’s the assumption that they just went for milk-flavored cigarettes and never came back. Which is certainly funnier to think about. As soon as Friend Bear and Secret Bear arrive, saying they only want to be their friends, the two kids do the sensible thing and walk away- you know, ignoring the fact they’re reacting very casually to talking bears that fell from the sky. What’s disappointing with the two children honestly is that the narration implies a lot more depth than given across the course of the movie. 

 

Mr. Cherrywood: (narration) “You see, although Kim and Jason were warm and loving children, they had been so hurt when their parents went away that they had decided to never love anyone ever again just in case they too went away.”

 

Their backstory about being so hurt by the world that they just stop caring is a tragic one, but as a movie for young children, it’s never explored far enough. When the movie so far is decently paced enough to have that be a possibility, but I want to explore that more later in the movie when that becomes a bigger problem. Besides, we quickly cut away from the kids to a carnival where a magician is setting up his magic act with his young and lonely assistant Nicholas, played by Hadley Kay. He looks like Shaggy Rogers meets Christopher Robin, so this bear crossover will get pretty freaking sweet soon if we keep our hopes up! But like Kim and Jason, it’s implied Nicholas’s parents got Batman’ed so he’s free to be overworked and neglected. His magician boss abuses him regularly and all the boy wants is for anyone to like him, but that all begins to change when Nicholas uncovers a sinister book within a newly-bought antique trunk- but he has yet to open it as we cut back to Care-A-Lot. 

Turns out the bears can develop any hyper-advanced cyber technology as long as it’s heart-shaped and sparkles- and if it’s used to stalk kiddies. Grumpy Bear, the guardian of his family’s only brain cell, is developing something extraordinary. The internet! The internet is technically used to share our feelings… for better or for worse. Just kidding, it’s a teleporter. Which the two mistakes of the family, Baby Hugs and Baby Tugs, decide to mess around with just in case you were thinking that maybe this movie would be watchable. (The babies in diapers imply that not only do they poop, but their own existence means the bears can reproduce.) But their messing around actually results in the kids, Friend, and Secret all teleporting to Care-A-Lot out of the blue. How did they teleport? Who cares? 

 

We get a song about the two jaded kids having their grouchiness slowly melt away as they play with the bears in their tour of the magical sky kingdom. The song is pretty alright, but it is slow and meandering, though the idea of lowfy jazz in Care-A-Lot is rather amusing- even the lyrics are pretty oddly sensual. The instrumental is good, the singing is soothing, but my main problem with the song is that it’s used to hyper-speed past any character development. The song is about having someone who cares that won’t go away, which is meant to serve to aid the character arcs of Jason and Kim. And before anyone mentions me caring about the character arcs in a movie for toddlers, it was the story writers’ choice to include a character arc in the first place when they could’ve easily gotten away with none. The kids start the movie jaded, and this musical number instantly transforms them into open-feeling and bubbly children. We’re not even 15 minutes into the film. Their journey of becoming happy again should’ve lasted at least half of the running time. That would’ve been a great arc to watch unfold throughout a movie about learning to care, but it doesn’t happen. Their heartbreak over being abandoned and losing their parents was just healed with one musical number? 10 years at most of childhood trauma healed, after these kids were so shattered inside that they shut themselves off from all future relationships? And if they were orphans, what were they doing walking around the park alone? Were they homeless? Everything that could’ve been great about these two kids developing is completely glossed over, making the movie’s themes much weaker as a result. 

So cutting back to Earth, Nicholas finally opens the book. This book turns out to have a creepy magical Maleficent face in it named The Spirit, voiced by the late Jackie Burroughs. And she sounds… attractive. They draw her sexy too. I’m… I’m feeling confused about this character, but at least the villain has a bit of mystique to her. She’s got a cool design and voice, and certainly has a creepy aura to her. The Spirit here seems to be the Necronomicon love child of Maleficent and the training HUD lady from Cybermorph. Hmm, maybe the book works part time in the ASMR industry… Anyway, she uses that ASMR voice of hers to tell Nicholas he can have as many friends as he wants with her magic. She can’t unlock herself despite all her powers- including being able to summon the key that opens the book in the first place, but she’s quite the worm tongue and gets Nicholas to unleash Hell on paper. The text is written in Minecraft enchantment table. So Nicholas has to use Lapis Lazuli and three of your levels to cast mending, but this spell simply puts his magician boss named The Great Fettuccine to sleep. Anyway, the most aggressive English teacher ever demands Nicholas read more and take over Fettuccine’s magic act.
 

Tenderheart finally decides to do his job and tells him magic isn’t the way to make friends. And like the children before him, Nicholas doesn’t care if a talking bear is in front of him- then again, he reacted to the magical talking book quite well too. This implies that talking bears are an everyday occurrence in this verse. Tenderheart claims to be Nicholas’s friend, and The Spirit responds with, “Where was he when you needed him?” Which to be fair, is an absolutely banger argument. Why are they choosing to help Nicholas now after all these years of being friendless and alone? Anyway, the Emperor Palpatine book throws Tenderheart in a cage with her magic and uses a Nat 20 roll on charisma to lure Nicholas into her schemes. Tenderheart says that magic isn’t the way to make friends, but feelings, but Nicholas's feelings say “magic” today, so he’s going with the book. He’ll be better than The Great Fettuccine: he’ll be The Great Kraft Dinner!

Nicholas’s magic show goes poorly as all the children in the audience laugh at him, as The Spirit seems to be manipulating her magic to make Nicholas fail on purpose to resort to her magic. Using her magic, Nicholas uses the power of the evil book to turn everyone in the audience into Redditors. The Spirit says they now feel nothing, and the angry and violent kids feel how Nicholas felt in all his friendless years. Tenderheart escapes his cage and tries to reason with Nicholas, but it’s too late. They need all the bears to help out this time. Back in Skyloft, Wish Bear says that there’s a couple on Earth that wants to adopt Kim and Jason… just like that. Again, this was what I was talking about with the hyper-rushed character development. Restoring Kim and Jason to their loving selves is too easy a task and nothing in the journey re-jeopardizes that feeling. Which sucks because, as we’ll soon see, the climax hinges on them. But this happiness is taken away as The Spirit summons an evil tornado that crumbles Care-A-Lot to pieces. Their Caring Meter is dropping fast, and if it drops to zero, no one will ever love or care again. It also implies they’ll possibly be extinct if it drops entirely? Anyway, something terrible must be happening on Earth to make it drop that fast. They must’ve discovered the internet. Or maybe they discovered war and violence… so the internet.

Anyway, to stop Nicholas and to get Kim and Jason parents that won’t leave to find milk-flavored cigarettes, they need to team up. Kim and Jason sacrifice their easy way home to free moms and dads to help the dread-teddys on their mission. They use the teleporter, but the transmission breaks upon usage and the kids and bears end up lost in a literal pocket dimension. Grump says, “They're lost. Somewhere between here and Earth.” ...So you mean the sky?

Anyway, as the kids are lost, Nicholas is being the Anakin to The Spirit’s Palpatine. She’s manipulating him to go further to the dark side. He’s turning full-on supervillain complete with a cape and evil lair within the fairground’s haunted castle attraction, making a cauldron of uncaring magic mambo-jumbo to make the world friendless and drenching Care-A-Lot in a wicked storm. While I do think The Spirit makes for a pretty cool villain, being able to coax the characters and turn their negative emotions into spells and monsters, her motivations are very vague. It’s implied she wants the world to stop caring, but we’re never given a reason as to why. Either there’s the implication that she thinks this will make Nicholas happy, or she doesn’t care about Nicholas and simply wants a world of darkness. She just wants to make the world suck. 

My friends Jordan and Abbey had some funny words to say about this movie.

 

As the other Care Bears go to find the missing kids and bears in their boat that they randomly have for some reason, I question that if the narrator said they have never used the river before, why do they have a boat? Anyway, they ride off on the Lor Starcutter from Kirby: Return to Dreamland, and we cut to the missing bears and kids in The Forest of Feelings. They’re about to be merciful and end the movie quickly by getting eaten by a lion, but no, it’s a friendly lion and the movie has to go on for another 85 minutes. The heroes get introduced to the creatures of this forest, such as Braveheart Lion, Playful Heart Monkey, and other toys you can purchase at your local Canadian Tire. And while the pacing of the movie has been decent so far, with enough scenes of peril to keep it from getting too saccharine, the second half of the movie here is when it goes completely off the rails into Happy-Clappy-Land and starts to become mindless drivel. And what better way to highlight that but with our second musical number?

The second song is just awful; none of the characters can sing, the lyrics are bland, the visuals aren’t anything we haven’t seen before… and the song, worst of all, has no purpose within the narrative. Like, what is the meaning of this song? It doesn’t introduce any new characters that dialogue couldn’t have, the forest isn’t a visually stimulating location as it’s too similar to Care-A-Lot and the plot has come to a complete stop. It’s as if the movie was insecure about audience attention, and needed to reach a minimum quota of songs… without realizing how sleep-inducing their song actually was. The kids finally stop this nonsense and ask the lion and monkey for ways back to Earth. Nicholas sees this scene unfold from his evil cauldron, and The Spirit says that Kim and Jason are a threat to Nicholas’s powerful spell making everyone in town lonely and loveless. Nicholas is satisfied with just the town, but The Spirit preys on his fears to make him reach higher and let his fear of being overthrown by those who still care take over his mind and create a cloud monster to hunt down the remaining bears. 

The Spirit seems to thrive off of bringing Nicholas to the dark side. She seems to have no motivation but to make Nicholas both insecure and seek revenge on every one on Earth. As Nicholas’s plan hinges on these two specific children being apathetic, we cut back to the rescue team trailing down the river. The cloud monster turns into a fish monster to cause a whirlpool to drown them, but again, the movie isn’t that kind as Wish Bear tying a rope to one of her stars pulls them to safety. As I struggle to stay awake with how slow the pacing becomes in the second act, Nicholas and his evil book are thankfully there to keep me awake by making their spell stronger. Their spell actually goes to hunt the kids this time and the cloud possesses the only tree in the forest with an evil face on it (this is what happens when the Great Deku Tree does drugs). Because the kids and bears were too busy playing charades and other games rather than saving the world, Kim and Jason are ambushed in the most obvious way possible and are about to be mauled by the tree. Braveheart tries to save them, but gets defeated by a leaf because that’s the level of power our “heroes” are at. I joke, but at least we’re finally back to getting some mild conflict in this slow-ass story… that is, if the tree didn’t do nothing. And that’s the biggest problem with the second act: barely anything actually happens, which drags the movie into boring pulp. The conflicts are shallow and the heroes overcome them through magic far too easily to be engaging. Even when the cloud turns into a giant bird to capture the kids, that's only about as exciting as the movie gets. The movie pulls out the Care Bear Stare to finally rid the world of the evil cloud monster’s avian form, as all the bears work together to magic-blast him away. Now finally, the movie is reaching its long-awaited (in more ways than one) climax.

The Fellowship of the Things is founded and they finally ride the river directly to the carnival down on Earth. The Spirit is pissed seeing all this from their spooky castle, so demands Nicholas (now in full maniacal laughter mode) do one final spell to rid the world of love and caring forever. The book just wants to make people jerks, to make them feel as rotten and lonely as Nicholas… but what is the book’s reward out of all of this? The desire to spread evil? Honestly, her motivation being to destroy the bears is enough for me: I can’t stand them either. The fairgrounds are now a ruined place of hate, and it’s up to the bears and their friends to split up and find them. The Care Bears watch as Nicholas gleefully gathers his evil ingredients. Okay, so Nicholas has turned 100% mustache-twirler in, like, two days? Damn, that evil spirit took advanced gaslighting to the next level.

The Care Bears are chased around the carnival by cruel kids, leaving Kim and Jason to be caught and hounded by Nicholas alone. Luckily, with all his time on the Dark Side, Nicholas should be able to use The Force now to stop them. Instead, he chases them throughout the dark maze within the carnival’s funhouse to some kind of trippy villain song playing in the background. Thankfully, it’s the only catchy song in the movie at least, and the Care Bears do turn around to help hinder Nicholas’s chase. It’s also the only song that progresses the plot and sounds audibly interesting with the high energy male singer harmonizing with the more hushed female voice to give a sense of panic and danger. The darker imagery and stressful song actually adds some decent tension within this scene, and the third act is when the movie finally starts picking up from the mud that was the second act. Anakin continues through the temple to slaughter the two younglings, so this is basically baby’s first Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I'm just waiting for Dark Helmet to show up. 

 

Nicholas actually starts using his magic and starts pointing there… menacingly! Zapping his dark powers all willy-nilly, he eventually finds himself with the final ingredient which makes him forget about fighting the Care Bears as he rushes to the castle. In order to do an intervention for Nicholas and talk about his magic addiction seriously, the bears ride the roller coaster right into the castle. Nicholas hams it up and claims it’s too late. Nicholas doesn’t buy their caring, especially when the Care Bears frequently use violence to solve their problems like when they use the Care Bear Stare on Nicholas. (“No, Nicholas: do not hurt the younglings or the Ewoks!”) The evil book also attempts to break the Care Bear Stare, as the villain and our heroes literally fight over this kid’s brain via brainwashing. Am I supposed to be rooting for any of these guys?

Nicholas is in delightfully bat-crap crazy mode, and he demands Kim and Jason be turned into uncaring jerks to finally complete his scheme. The Care Bears fight by being loud and annoying and using the exact same technique that failed in the previous scene, so they’re practically worthless. Kim and Jason arrive on the scene to actually be useful. Being unloved kids themselves, their speech on how they care about Nicholas because they actually understand him actually does the trick in convincing Nicholas to stop being evil. At least the kids save the day other than the bears, since they’re also abandoned and friendless children, so it feels more authentic. If this was in a better movie, this could’ve been a very emotional scene- but the lack of character development for Kim and Jason ruined this otherwise good idea for a climax.

 

Nicholas closes the evil book who literally just existed to be a hater (just making her a spirit that gets her power from peoples’ hatred and that would be fine). The key they built up to seal the book is destroyed by her in a last struggle, but they literally magically spawn another key. (Why did they build up the key if they just destroyed it and replaced it so easily?) The bears freaking stab the book in the heart, and it was still a less evil book than Twilight. So everyone lives happily ever after: Kim and Jason get adopted, Fettuccine magically becomes good, Nicholas becomes a famous magician, and the Care Bears celebrate by introducing the animals of the forest into their family. …Wait a minute! Because Nicholas spent the whole movie being a dick, the kids offered to be his friends despite his evil, and that made him good? This is the ending but Episode 6 but bad, and the Star Wars jokes are too easy to make. It even has the Jedi Council! Oh well, at least the ending is sweet: the old man running the orphanage is revealed to be Nicholas, all grown-up and happy as can be, and the Care Bears have been watching over him and the kids in his care the whole time. To be fair, that is a wholesome twist and a good ending… to a really bad movie.

 

The Care Bears Movie is, as expected, not a good movie. It’s stupid, but not the most insulting thing I’ve ever seen. It’s fairly innocent, with no bad lessons, or anything harmful aside from the blatant commercialism. The pacing is good at the end and beginning, but the Forest of the Feelings segments really dries up. Thankfully, the climax is the most interesting part of the movie to keep it from being 100% terrible or too dreadfully boring. With that being said, it’s still a movie for infants. It’s hard to be engaged unless there’s something to the story or characters for parents watching at home. The animation is fluid and clean for the time, with some genuinely beautiful backgrounds and flowing movements. It’s not obnoxiously bright and busy like a lot of other bad kid’s media. The voice acting is decent, with some fine names in the cast. But the movie is too flawed to ever be called good, despite a good antagonist and some atmosphere. The kids needed more development, as their potential for a really emotional arc was squandered and made the potentially-good climax weaker because of how rushed Kim and Jason were. They needed to grow throughout the journey, not after one musical number. Speaking of that, pretty much all of the songs sucked: bland lyrics and annoying melodies abound except for maybe the villain song in the carnival. Speaking of, the villain herself was fine. Love the voice, love the design, love the aura… but she needed solid motivation. She literally just hates because she can, which I guess is serviceable for a movie like this. Overall this movie, ironically enough, had a heart that was there… it just wasn’t big enough. The story of these lonely kids overcoming their apathy to grow and love each other is a good idea on paper, and there’s glimmers of that within this movie- especially when it comes to Nicholas’s story. Thankfully, this movie isn’t horrible. It’s boring, but there is a genuine story here with decent themes and characters with attempted depth. And thankfully, I never have to watch movies like this again.

 

Unfortunately, this video is both the start of me reviewing this series… and also a farewell. On September 2nd 2025, Nelvana silently shut down its doors after 54 years of animated art. The closure was swift and sudden, but many former employees took to social media like Twitter and Reddit to air out their sorrow and explain to fans why the company was shut down. Many blamed the studio’s closure on its purchase by the large Canada media conglomerate Corus Entertainment in 2000. While I doubt it was entirely Corus’s fault for Nelvana’s shutdown (the company survived for 25 more years after the purchase), it’s also likely Corus likely didn’t care about the people working at Nelvana and more so cared only for the content they created, being just another asset in their portfolio. Another blaming point was the rise of streaming services taking over the majority of the market to the point where cable has become obsolete, while many others blamed incompetent Canadian telemarketers and their telecom companies bleeding money. We can only play the blame-game for so long. All that matters now is they are gone, and it’s quite a sad sight to see them go. My country owes its debts to the Care Bears for saving Nelvana. They kept pumping out Care propaganda as we have yet to pay our dues to our ursine overlords (the evil book now possesses the head of the Conservative Party and is helping to run his campaign). 

 

And this is, for the foreseeable future, my final movie review online.

 

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to draw, write, and review, and eventually make my own animated movie or cartoon. However, as I become a young adult in her 20s and enter college, I feel an urge to do something else with my life. As a talented writer and artist, there was always pressure to “do something” with my talents. Become an author, become an animator, etc. have a successful career right this very second, and spend the majority of your teenage and young adult years honing your skills for a job that never comes! But now I slow down and realize that I don’t want my hobbies to become my job. Heck, I may not even want my hobbies anymore. I don’t want to write anymore. I don’t want to draw anymore. And I don’t want to write reviews anymore. It’s scary to feel like what you’ve spent years of your life doing (drawing, writing, etc.) was all for nothing and that major parts of your identity are gone. But that’s not what’s happening: what’s happening is that I’m changing, and I’m gaining new interests and gaining new ideas, and some of that means losing old interests and ideas.

 

Do I know what I want just yet? Not really. This is the part of my life where I’m still exploring and finally discovering myself. But for ideas, I think I want to pursue a career and degree in early childhood education. Through volunteering at after-school programs and church camps, I discovered I have a real talent with kids and enjoy working in that sort-of daycare environment. I like reading stories, preparing crafts and snacks, singing silly songs- and I don't even mind cleaning up afterwards. But first, I have to complete my current college program. If all goes well, I’ll graduate, move to Kingston with my family to apply to the ECE program at their college over there, and start my professional life. 

 

With that being said, thank you for joining me on this amazing internet journey. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do: comics, fan fiction, commissions, videos, let’s plays, audiobooks, animatics, and reviews like this very blog. But now the internet isn’t fun anymore. I’m maturing, and the online world is getting more capitalistic, cutthroat, and toxic. And with no new story or drawing ideas to pull me back in, I think it’s time for me to discover new things. Your support really meant the world to me, and I’ve made genuinely amazing friends on the internet. These friends I will keep, but for now, I think I just want to use the internet for my friends and maybe to finish up a few projects here and there. I still have fan fiction to wrap up, and I hope to finish it in full. But as for now, while I’m not saying “goodbye” to the internet, I’m simply acknowledging I’m growing past it and that there’s more to life than what’s on the computer. Wish me luck on the next stage in life!

 

Thank you for all your love and wishes, my beautiful fairies, and never stop dreaming.