Care Bears: Journey to Joke-a-Lot

As a parent forced to endure a fair amount of kids entertainment, it is always a relief to find something that is at least tolerable to an adult. When my son became infatuated with the Care Bears, I had sit through the painful Care Bears Movie (1985) a number of times, and then through some excruciating videos of episodes from the mid-80s TV show.

But then we got the DVD of Journey to Joke-a-lot, and the opening song by Jane Siberry immediately caught my attention. Then the story turned out to be engaging, and not too cloying, with enjoyable songs. And there's even a parody of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey! So I can say it greatly exceeded my expectations and I can recommend it as something at least passably entertaining to adults as well as children.

Just for the record, I don't hate the Care Bears. By all means I'm not a huge fan, but I do think some of the hate the franchise and characters garner do verge on unfair. Although I loved the 1980s show and the original movie, and enjoyed New Generation, Wonderland and Nutcracker, I found myself disliking Journey to Joke-a-Lot. It seemed cute on paper and the character of Gig certainly is so. But the jerky character designs and lurid colour schemes make the film visually unappealing, while the score lacks whimsy and apart from a couple of delightful ones the songs are mostly limp with uninspiring lyrics. The script is a very uneven mix of weakly-done silly and sweet moments, Funshine's coronation speech is one of the, perhaps even the, worst single scenes of anything to do with Care Bears. The story is structurally thin, some scenes such as most of the songs and the middle are little more than lazy filler and the messages are handled in a very heavy-handed way. The characters are not the simple and charming ones from especially the 1980s, the villains are completely insipid, Funshine is now a bully and Grumpy is an utter wimp here. The voice work is terrible sadly too, too high in pitch with next to no subtlety and it also sounded as though they had been recorded in a helium balloon. All in all, a poor movie and a bland one. 2/10 Bethany Cox

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.

2004 is for everyone's excited-ness for Disney/PIXAR's Die Unglaublichen (2004), in which "Journey to Joke-a-Lot" is released a month prior. Anyway, like those music numbers is so very catchy, and one emotionally moving, that everyone will dance into it.

If you love the Care Bears from the 80's, they, Nelvana, brought it back in CGI and for direct-to-video premiere, presented by Lions Gate Family Entertainment, for the forecoming Holiday season. Every story in the franchise, like this, is unique, even humor is in Joke-a-Lot, the land's formula.

I had this movie on DVD as a little girl, and me and my sibling watched it all the time. When we watched it again as older teens, we were surprised at how well it held up.

Yes, the CGI is hilariously bad by modern standards, but for low budget CGI in 2004, I'm sure it could have looked worse. There is no excuse for those bug abominations, though, ew.

The movie is pretty funny, with some good visual gags, and the set design is also pretty nice.

I really like the messages of "making jokes when bad things happen is inappropriate" and "think before you speak", as I feel those are still very important things for kids to learn.

The songs are pretty hit-or-miss. The opening and the credits song are bad, but Funshine's two solos and the Joke-a-Lot group song all slap.

Overall, it didn't age quite as terribly as expected. I would recommend this to parents with young children, and maybe to adults too, just for a laugh.