Archive for category Childhood Revisited
CHILDHOOD REVISITED – THE CARE BEARS II: A NEW GENERATION
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Childhood Revisited, Film, Television, Uncategorized on November 1, 2009
F*ck trees! The bastards.
The Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation – (1985)
Director: Dale Schott
Starring: Hadley Kay, Cree Summer, Maxine Miller, Dan Hennessey
Screenplay by: Peter Sauder
Why, you may ask, did I decide to tackle the sequel to The Care Bears Movie? Was the first one so incomplete that it warranted a viewing of the second one to feel more wholesome? Is my childhood so disappointing, so mundane, that I needed to force myself through another enterprise of excessive “caring” and “sharing” and “feelings” to warm my neglected heart? Am I an emotional sadist?
Like I’ve said in the past, I’m watching everything I watched as a kid, no if’s, and’s, or bu’ts about it. As I mentioned in my previous review, I was surprised that, at the very least, the first film developed a relatively straight-forward adventure of the cutest degree, even if the ending just wasted everything that preceded it. And besides, I’m still jonesing to find that ridiculously sad song I remember on of these movies having, even if I have to shove a trillion hearts, stars, and rainbows deep into my eyelids. I’m doing this all for you, dear readers.
NOSTALGIC LENS: Nothing distinctly from the first one. Both movies are the same blur of cute animals and clouds and hearts. I can’t remember anything significant that stood out from one movie over the other. Except. That. SONG.
DOES IT HOLD UP: I am a sucker for fantasy-created backstory. It always amazes me to experience the history/background of made-up characters, even if said characters are lame and bear-ly endearing (see what I did there?). While certain developed backstories are just obvious fluff and fanboy-based powergaming (Person X fought off the government/secret society/evil demons/cast of According to Jim), a solid, over-aching history really presents how creative and clever a writer can be. How well one thinks and showcases a real, devised world really brings weight and direction to any main story.
A New Generation does just that. It’s a prequel more than a sequel; it posits to tell how the Care Bear and the Care Bear Cousins came to be.
After, uh, GOD gives “Noah” Bear and his wife (or significant other—the gender is never made clear) a place to live among the clouds, the two are given the task to care for the cubs (who are orphans) as well as the typical “help those in need” tasks. Darkheart causes chaos below on Earth to capture the Care Bears, so to protect the children, True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse divide and separate them—the Care Bears are taken to Car-A-Lot, and the Cousins are deposited in the Forest of Feelings.
Sauder spends a bit of time working the history of the characters here, which I actually admire. I was surprised to see him describe how the originals and Cousins got separated; and while there’s a couple of huge, temporal mistakes in trying to piece the first movie with the second one, it’s still an ambitious task that’s managed as well as I suppose it could have been.
Which is a problem, because once you enter the road of background information, you’re only opening up a huge Pandora’s Box of questions: where originally did the Care Bears come from? Where were they going when they were on the boat? Who abandoned the Bears originally? What did True Heart and Noble Heart do that was so special to deserve high-apple-pie-in-the-sky status? How long does it take them to grow?! (Although– I do have a theory of how to make this work: time in the Kingdom of Caring moves MUCH faster than on Earth.) Of course, I’m exaggerating. I don’t have any major investment on the details. But it would have been really exquisite if Sauders managed to not only weave a seamless backstory here, but also leave some perfect wiggle room to fit the events from the first one into this one.
Mainly because that’s really the only interesting part of this movie. A New Generation reaps rewards in the Care Bear history but misses completely on an interesting main plot. I suppose it starts off okay—Christy sells her soul to Darkheart to become the Camp Champ, only to have to help the evil force capture the Bears later in the film. But this idea is never taken anywhere, even in the simplest, pre-school terms. For a good twenty minutes, Darkheart doesn’t even bother to exploit Christy’s tête-à-tête, but just opts to chase them around, like an inept dogcatcher.
Beyond that, the story jumps all over the place. Tender Heart and Noble Heart chase Darkheart for what seems like ages; when they realize it’s just its shadow, they return in twenty seconds. The Bears are supposedly disappearing—but they’re not. And then, they are, all at the same moment when Christy pretends to be stuck in a canoe (the scene here is really fucking designed like crap—it’s a visual, confusing mess). Christy saves Darkheart, a flying, transforming force of hatred and evil, after he knocks himself out on the boat like a moronic klutz. The final fight between the Bears/Cousins and Darkheart is lame, with red lighting bolts missing everything, and the mundane power of the stares/calls just being a nuisance. And seeing Darkheart show sympathy for Christy at the end, you know, since she saved his life, coupled with the “We Care” chant at the end (in which the viewer is supposed to participate), just puts the final cap on the most inane, boring story ever, even at children standards. There’s no sense of travel or adventure here, which leaves any sense of exploration or discovery; any chance of the older crowd finding any avenue to enjoy this flick is fairly insignificant.
(An aside: there is a juicy bit that implies Christy’s desire to become a Camp Champ was not for a selfish caving to win, but to indirectly protect John and Don, two random, “master race” twins. But with a lack of a defined relation between Christy and John and Don, and with the most frustrating and constant repetition of plot points this side of Heroes, it’s never taken anywhere interesting. Which is too bad.)
BUT.
The final five minutes of A New Generation is gloriously beautiful. The song I sought for so long is here, and it’s as heart-wrenching as I remember it, but made doubly-so with an soft, evening-mood atmosphere coupled with a montage of the Care Bears enjoying their simple, un-requited childhood, before being pushed into their roles of saving the world of love. Even these cute, cuddly creatures of caring can’t return to the times of pure innocence, and if any moment in film represented the overall feeling I had while doing this “Childhood Revisited” feature, this moment is it:
IN A NUTSHELL: Overall, this movie is just a waist, save for the beginning and the end. Hell, I’d say this entire movie was made for that final song sequence alone. When a movie makes you feel the pain of the freaking Care Bears growing up, something was done right.
While I won’t be reviewing CB3, I’ll probably watch it on my own on the side—it looks like it’s more of a generic adventure than something with ultra-love-caring pushed upon the audience.
November 9nd: The Secret of NIMH
November 16th: Home Alone
CHILDHOOD REVISITED – THE CARE BEARS MOVIE
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Childhood Revisited, Film, Television, Uncategorized on October 25, 2009
Black extras? In an animated film? In 1985? PROGRESS.
The Care Bears Movie – (1985)
Director: Ama Selznick
Starring: Mickey Rooney, Jackie Burroughs, Billie Mae Richards
Screenplay by: Peter Sauder
I return from a surprisingly disappointing vacation and a three-day sickness a bitter, angry man, perturbed at the world for their utter enjoyment of life and health as I suffer through another daily grind of unfriendly coworkers and apathetic bosses. My rage seethes slowly and I wish they all could know the suffering that I felt.
But Lo! The Care Bears, with their ever-watchful eye over the suspecting public, have come to me upon their cloud-cars and rainbow-teleportation devices to teach me about sharing, caring, and, uh, bear-ing, softening my heart, and leaving me a cheerful, happier person. I am healthy, and now I only say “Fuck you” to myself instead of out-loud. This is how you defined progress in the 80s, people. Besides, their movie made $23 million, the highest grossing non-Disney movie at that time. Somehow, caring, love, and friendship is profitable. Now only if Facebook could figure out that formula…
NOSTALGIC LENS: Besides a number bears doing their belly thing, which is called the “Care Bear Stare” (WHAT?), I don’t remember too much about it. I do know that either this or the sequel have an incredibly good, sad ending theme, and that I had cried while listening to it (I was rather sensitive when I was young, shut up). As an aside: the modern Care Bears is a joke; while a decent enough show, it only has five characters – the original C-Bears numbered in the twenties. That’s when we had time to memorize that kind of thing.
DOES IT HOLD UP: I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this. I was preparing myself to be bored by the excessive love/friendship preaching that’s notorious for these kinds of childhood fluff-balls. But then I remembered an incident about a year ago, while over a friend’s house. As a joke, he put on My Little Ponies, another show notorious for its cuteness. However, the villain, whose name escapes me and, sure, I could look it up, but we’re talking about MY LITTLE PONIES here, was actually a legit bad guy who seemed hell bent on a little more than stopping kids from hugging each other. He wanted to turn the Ponies into his personal killing army with black magic. Whoa.
And so, while The Care Bears Movie doesn’t exactly push into that intriguing realm of darkness, it does surprise with a somewhat engaging adventure story. Sure, it starts in the typical way: nice old man telling a cute story; delightful theme song with light, goofy antics, the Care Bears replying to some lonely, introverted orphans.
Some nifty stuff starts to happen, though; a magic book corrupts the all-around fuck-up Nicholas and turns him evil. Well, not evil, just uncaring; which spreads and causes the home of the Care Bears, Care-A-Lot, to fall apart. They try to send the orphans home but in the midst of the transport, shit goes wrong and they disappear.
Before I continue, I want to note a few things. Firstly, the Bears are a pretty competent unit that’s put together for such a mediocre and essentially worthless task. They seem to have a structure and clear-defined roles, and they work together rather well to do the most abstract thing in the universe; to make people care. But this goes beyond just being magically nice cuddly-toys. Their land and society EXISTS and THRIVES on caring. They do what they do to save themselves. Sure, it’s nice to learn a few lessons about love and friendship, but let’s not be naïve; they need to save their very existence. Believe me, if the only way to save America is to kiss babies eighty times a day, well, we’d be puckering up a lot.
With their world in danger (and, I guess, some kids to inspire), a ton of bears, lead by Tender Heart, go on a mission to find the missing orphans. On their quest, they enter the Forest of Feeling (yeah, this kind of name-thing continues throughout the picture), and while there’s really nothing exciting that happens, it still manages to drive some action forward, with the Bears or the orphans getting into some sort of trouble, and some of the Forest of Feeling-ers (Feeling-ites?) would arrive and save them. The entertaining value here is seeing the new characters and how they help the Bears, and yet, at the same time, seeing the Bears pull their own weight and do some saving themselves. There’s a really good balance here.
The exposition is bad, and the music isn’t too much better (although, there is something nice about the songs; they’re composed well, if lacking quality lyrics, singers, and instruments). But the action trade-offs in those two clips are quite nice, and might keep the parents from going too crazy.
… until the third act. The lameness, which was kept at bay for the most part, comes full force at the end, with Nicholas running around like an idiot trying to find random park junk for a spell. And he chases the orphans to the worse song ever written, ever. The trade-off in the action of the Bears and the Feeling Folks (that sounds creepy) is gone, and their powers become worthless when the orphans bitch about love and junk, winning over Nicholas’s heart. It’s disappointing, too, especially since you’d think the climax would contain the most badasseray, with some crazy magic spells, some evil beasts, maybe a dead Bear. Well, not so much the last point. But instead of a cuddly but aggressive fight, we’re left with the power of WORDS. In this case, words indeed do hurt– the person is pain just happens to be the viewer.
Also… “Aren’t parents great!?” This is an actual line in the movie.
IN A NUTSHELL: The storyteller is actually Nicholas all grown up. Bitch about that “spoiler” all you want—you weren’t going to see it anyway. I wouldn’t recommend it, either, if even for the nostalgic desire. The animation isn’t that great, the songs go from mediocre to downright horrid, the voice work likewise, and the story is barely competent. But it… works. IMDB has it at five stars, and, yeah, that’s about right. I admit, though, I found it more enjoyable than I expected, but I think it’s because I had really low expectations.
November 2nd: The Care Bears Movie 2: A New Generation
November 9th: The Secret of NIMH
CHILDHOOD REVISITED – THE NEVERENDING STORY
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Childhood Revisited, Film, Uncategorized on October 11, 2009
Screw the journey. This is when Atreyu becomes a MAN.
The NeverEnding Story – (1984)
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Barret Oliver, Noah Hathaway, Tami Stronach, Alan Oppenheimer
Screenplay by: Wolfgang Petersen, Herman Weigel
It’s no secret that the drudgeries of work have instilled in us a sense of complacency and mundaneness that forces us to live paycheck to paycheck. The world around us applies an enormous amount of social pressures to consume the same products in their infinite variations to “keep up,” leaving us victims of our own greed. Those who claim to be immune to it have a lot of explaining to do as they pay fifty-plus bucks a month for their internet access to rant on message boards about the evils of corporate capitalism and the mind-numbing sense of commercialism it brings.
Office Space focuses solely on the white-collar insane boringness to a hilarious degree of scary accuracy that reflects Dilbert in many ways. Fight Club socialized the feeling into a raucous, violent form of escapism and revolution that spiraled way out of control. All the while, Petersen’s debut film, The NeverEnding Story, came and went with the typical 80s corporate gamut of sequels and TV-shows (and probably merchandise). And yet, this film is probably the most representative of the sense of losing one’s individuality and sense of the world and everything that it can offer, as well as everything one can bring to it. School and work, from childhood to the grave, seems poised to destroy our sense of creativity and freedom to explore our own minds, and this movie excellently shows this without nary a heavy-handed speech.
NOSTALGIC LENS: This is one of those films that I’ve watched in parts be hardly ever all the way through, so it’s difficult to remember what happened when. Because of which, I can’t say I enjoyed it too much. It seemed too weird to me; more like a random occurrence of events than a seamless story of creative proportions (a feeling now that I attribute to Pan’s Labyrinth. Seriously, that movie seems less of a genuine story than more of an excuse to showcase del Toro’s wacky imagination).
DOES IT HOLD UP: Petersen’s track record (Air Force One, Outbreak, Troy) beguiles the absolute sense of beauty and control that he brought to The NeverEnding Story. It’s a surprisingly clever and elaborate story of hopes and dreams, and while I sound corny saying that, I really mean it. Very few films can actually portray emotion and abstract feelings outside of the limitations of the actors and writing, but this movie does, and does very, very well.
Much of the credit has to go to cinematographer Jost Vacano, who frames each shot expertly and beautifully, capturing the large sense of both the real world and the imaginary world of Fantasia by relying on maintaining the focus on what’s absolutely important. I have to admit, a lot of the shots reminded me of something out of Kubrick, especially how the camera just lingers and lets the actors (or the mise-en-scene, aka the exact setting you see) tell the story. It’s so effective that it makes the on-the-nose dialogue work effectively, as the opening scene showcases between Bastian and his father at 2:20:
I spoke at length of childhood issues in my Jumanji review, and while the “kill ’em all” feeling in Jumanji is no where in this film, there is still a real “threat” (with the bullies) and an absolute sense of loneliness (no friends; hell, no teachers even bother to look for him) that defines Bastian. He lives in his own world, cut off after his mother’s death, of fantasies and dreams. His father tries to ground him into the realities of life, but being tossed in a trash can doesn’t exactly scream “realism is better!” When he steals a book from a strange bookkeeper/pedophile, he gets drawn into the trials and tribulations of our young hero, Atreyu, as he journeys to save Fantasia.
The world is a delight of whimsical characters; giant rock monsters and swamp turtles; bats and racing snails; three-headed and large-headed civilians, all seeking desperately to save Fantasia from the Nothing; an evil force seeking to destroy everything. Bastian follows Atreyu across deserts and through forests, oddly enough feeling every single thing the hero feels; his emotions are completely regulated to the characters of stories. But far be it from me to claim such emotions aren’t genuine; take a look at this absolutely gut-wrenching scene when Atreyu loses his horse Artax in the Swamp of Sadness:
I’ll admit that I teared up there. In fact, I teared up a lot during this movie (real tears, too, as opposed to those fake ones), a sentiment that caught me by surprise, especially with the slightly unrefined writing and choppy editing (a lot of the cuts needed to hold for one second longer before jumping to another angle). The writing, although awkward at times, worked especially well as a dramatization of how someone would write a children’s story; so the excess exposition is not so much of a burden than a broadcasted version of what your child’s reader might say (although, this doesn’t exactly excuse the father/Bastian exposition, but again, the well-shot execution makes up for it).
And while the fantasy-adventure sends Atreyu (and by proxy, Bastian) into some pretty exciting and exorbitant locales, the movie shifts into a whole ‘nother direction towards the end. At the real risk of a SPOILER, it becomes a giant meta-commentary of not only Bastian’s relation to Atreyu (where the reader becomes part of the story and actually effects it where the climax hits) but the audience itself, traveling along with Bastian and Atreyu during the entire trip. Through the Empress, the movie calls out the viewer’s real emotional connection to the characters, asking us to, in a way, not only accept the adventure before our eyes but to expand upon it; unlike Gmork, the servant of the darkness, who growls out the decimation of creative ingenuity to swallow up such ideas in the Nothing—the smoky force that turns innate daydreaming into soulless blankness. I doubt it’s any coincidence that “Gmork” sounds kinda like “Work.”
Perhaps the saddest moment is the end, when Bastian saves Fantasia by calling out a name for the Empress (FYI—it’s Moonchild, which is odd, since the film implies that Moonchild was the name of Bastian’s mother). A scene follows with propels Bastian to “re-imagine” Fantasia to his heart’s content; indeed, he restores Fantasia to his mind, riding Falkor and bringing back Artax, as well as harassing those bullies with the luck dragon. But remember—this is all in the realm of fantasy; no matter how satisfying this seems, it’s ultimately only wishful thinking. Bastian is still friendless, suffering, and sad, and perhaps in his reality he will, in time, over come that. But for now, we as an audience can’t help but let him have his moment.
Everything else… well, I suppose that’s another story.
IN A NUTSHELL: I commented audibly during this movie that this movie has HEART. More than any Pixar or early-Disney movie will ever hope to achieve. Part of the appeal is the fourth-wall line The NeverEnding Story carefully walks to bring the audience into the story and the “story of the story”. The creative world and wonderful characters only add to the sensation. I actually want to see the sequels to see what happens to Bastian; but in a way, I know that would ruin the full sense of what this film is trying to achieve. It’s choppy at parts, but wonderful none-the-less.
October 19th: VACATION
October 26th: The Care Bears Movie