Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue
The plot chronicles the exploits of Michael, a teenager who is using marijuana and stealing his father's beer. His younger sister, Corey, is worried about him because he started acting differently. When her piggy bank goes missing, her cartoon tie-in toys come to life to help her find it. After discovering it in Michael's room along with his stash of drugs, the various cartoon characters proceed to work together and take him on a fantasy journey to teach him the risks and consequences a life of drug-use can bring and save the world. Financed by Ronald McDonald House Charities, it features an introduction by President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush.
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- Cast:
- Jason Marsden , Lindsay Parker , Townsend Coleman , Laurie O'Brien , Jeff Bergman , Jim Cummings , George C. Scott
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Reviews
Excellent adaptation.
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Blistering performances.
When I was in seventh grade, our health teacher made us watch this movie. He prefaced it with a Serious Business Discussion about drugs, and then somehow managed to show us this with a straight face. Yes, it's THAT ridiculous . . . people were laughing hysterically throughout the whole movie and several people commented that if being high meant you got to meet the Smurfs, they wanted to get high.The teacher refused to comment on whether or not he intended this movie to seriously affect us.We were all born in the same year this movie was made, but I for one had seen all the cartoons with characters in the movie except The Smurfs, so it's not really true that you can't like it if you weren't young in the late eighties/ early nineties.The only thing that could possibly have made this movie better is if the Care Bears were in it.
A lot of people have been making what I think are unfair comparisons between this cartoon and the 1939 movie REEFER MADNESS. First of all, when MADNESS was released, there wasn't sufficient information out about the effects of marijuana on the human brain. Thus, the filmmakers didn't really know what they were talking about when they had their "weed addicts" getting all hyper and everything. Weed isn't like cocaine or heroin. Second, this show was aimed at very young children and children don't pick up on subtlety very well. Most of them take things at face value, so simply stating "Don't do drugs" without an explanation wasn't going to cut it. I was already in my twenties when I saw this and think that they did a good job without too much preaching nor hitting over the head with its message.If you ask me, either this could use a rerunning or a remake/update. Things are starting to "go south" in a very big way. Too bad there aren't that many really good Saturday morning cartoons out anymore. Could you see the Rugrats or Lilo & Stitch in a production of this type? Darn you, corporate takeovers!
A truly impressive collection of characters. I remember seeing this long ago when I was a child. Now that I'm older I understand what a big deal it was that sooo many celebrities came together to allow a lot of the biggest animated characters to do this show. It should be shown again.
If there's one thing I want to distinguish myself from all the other great reviewers here, it's that I am the Queen of Finding Strange Movies in Thrift and Dollar Stores. That said, you can't possibly imagine how happy I was when I found this one. I can even remember that Saturday morning when *every* station simulcast it, so you were stuck if you wanted to watch something else (then again, I guess that was the idea). As a kid, I didn't know if I liked the way all the different characters were stuck together (there are some crossovers that just do *not* work). But I guess the special had it's intended effect. Don't do drugs because you will have nightmares about the Muppets.Now, if you watch this as an adult, on the other hand, you will be treated to the *strangest* anti-drug movie this side of "Reefer Madness". I think I'll just leave it at that before I get into trouble.