Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer

I remember years ago reading in a TV Guide an article about a video store which asked you to select more than one movie title just in case one or the other was already checked out (it was written because back during this time period rental stores were still a new novelty to many at the time), and it mentioned a young teenage girl who was babysitting a small boy who was around five years old. The boy's parents had instructed her to let him select a movie to keep him occupied, and they were standing in line with the two titles he had selected: "The Shaggy Dog" and "Rainbow Brite and The Star Stealer."

When interviewed, she remarked with freaked-out anxiousness, "I sure hope it's 'The Shaggy Dog' they've got. I'll ***DIE*** if it's 'Rainbow Brite'." The article described her as making the comment with "all the air of one about to get sick on the carpet."

She spoke pretty much for everybody out there except a tiny select few who were introduced to this film as small girls back during the time period. That's because we have here what just might be the one film that single-handedly represnts everything terrible that happened to animation during the eighties!

Now to be fair, there were a lot of "cute" children's cartoons that came out during the period which were designed strictly to be animated advertisements for the toys they were based on. (I exempt "The Smurfs" from this list not only because they were great, but because they were never designed to sell toys in the first place and were in fact based on a famous European comic strip.) Most of them were terrrible with cheap animation and dumbed-down plots. The only film out of all of them which has managed to amazingly age with grace is "The Care Bears Movie".

Now, I don't have a big problem with cartoons designed for young girls--provided they are done right. For example, I actually enjoyed watching the "Strawberry Shortcake" specials made for television during the time because they had a lot of deliberately silly humour and also because they actually had imagination to the concept (adults will now see all the tounge-in-cheek jokes in "Shortcake" that went over their heads as toddlers). But this one isn't even fun on a campy level, save for the portions where it becomes unintentionally hilarious. It's just bad bad bad bad BAD.

I've always got the impression that Rainbow Brite was created as a Care Bears ripoff, and that point of view remains unchanged today. It is simply the most unoriginal and unimaginative of all the eighties offerings in its genre. Everything present here has been done before better somewhere else by even cheap lousy cartoons from the time which just somehow managed to not be AS cheap and badly written as this one. It was also considered a bomb compared to its competition, and if you dare see it you'll see why. Oh yes, it also has the most self-conscious and pretentious voice acting I've ever encountered this side of badly-dubbed anime.

As a friend of mine once remarked, "Don't let kids watch this film unless you want them to learn bad manners from Rainbow Brite's stuck-up horse! Can you imagine how many little kids will watch this film and all want to grow up to be stuck-up horses?!" (No, I'm not kidding about that description of Starlite, it's true.)

Avoid, avoid, avoid. Unless you take a particularly wicked pleasure in watching an animated embarrassment fall on its face, that is.

(Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering... the teenage girl I mentioned was later relieved to the point of jumping and shouting "ALRIIIGHT!" when she learned her young charge had gotten his hands on 'The Shaggy Dog' instead.)

This was one of the first movies I ever got to see in theaters, and for nothing else it's a nostalgia trip. I must have watched it a lot as a kid cause I remember it pretty clearly, without having seen it recently.

The script was a cheese factory, and the characters are pretty silly, but it was never meant for adults. I personally as an adult found the princess to be entertaining, but mostly I credit this movie, and the series from which it was made as being very positive for young girls. Rainbow Bright, while being a bit silly, was a strong female presence in network after network of male oriented cartoons intended for the same audience.

What ever sillyness and unrealness came from the movie are secondary to me. It's a nostalgia trip, and a good memory to boot. Show this movie to your young female children. The boys won't like it, but I think that most young girls will still see what I saw in it almost twenty years ago.

Rainbow Brite was the very first movie I ever saw at a movie theater. Though the animation may have been poor and the quality cheezy, it was enough to thoroughly encaptivate and enthrall a little 5-year old girl. To this very day, I still remember scenes and clips in my head of my favorite childhood toy coming to life on the big screen.

Rainbow Brite and the star Stealer is not for people who were born before 1980 or after 1989. Most of those people would not appreciate the great things that are 80's cartoons. The fact that Rainbow Brite was made into a movie is a guilty pleasure for many of us who remember watching the tv show as a child. Granted, much of the dialogue is quite amusing and silly, and the plot is nonexistant to pointless, but it's a very cool movie none the less.

If you were born in the late 70's or early 80's then Rainbow Brite was the cartoon to watch. From the colors to the music, this movie brings back my childhood. This is a great cartoon with good morals and a good ending. Rainbow Brite has to save the world from an evil Princess who thinks that she can have anything she wants. Who else but Rainbow Brite, with the help of her new friends Khris, can bring sunlight and rainbows back into the world. This is an essential cartoon to watch!