Gli Orsetti del Cuore: Una Giornata a Giocattolandia

I enjoyed the original 2d movies for their charm & imagination. My favourite characters were Grumpy Bear (reduced to a whiny toddler in this mess), Hugs & Tugs (baby bears) & the Care Bear Cousins. The babies & cousins were absent, as were any humans. The bears learn a lesson about there's a time to laugh & a time to be serious, but the way they treat Grumpy at the beginning is appalling. The original Grumpy was an able handy bear & he growled about things, but beneath was a heart of gold. You admired him. Here he just comes across as a wimp. The new voice was dreadful. The others were just as bad. In fact the only character I cared about was a sweet pig called Gig. The villains in the original films were scary, but the rat & mosquitoes aren't even vaguely threatening. Care-a-lot had been radically redesigned. 3d computer animation doesn't have the same appeal for me as 2d. It's too hard edged, perfect & unfluffy. Certainly inappropriate for Care Bears. Some bears had been coloured differently. Better to seek out the originals. This newbie lost its way entirely. 3/10

Fine enough for very VERY young children, but these are not the lovable little bears we knew and loved. The storytelling was OK with enjoyable songs and the animation was colorful but the jerky movement of the characters could be quite creepy and grotesque.

But the biggest problem was the bears! Instead of having voices full of endearing charm and warmth, they sounded like 6-year olds with Down's Syndrome high on helium. Funshine Bear isn't even likable. He's more of a big bully than a Care Bear. What he did to poor Grumpy Bear in the beginning was cruel and he never seemed to be sorry.

Your'e much better off showing your kids the vintage sweet simple Care Bear films. They aren't painful to watch and actually have good morals.

BOTTOM LINE: You could care less about this bland charmless bastardization

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.

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

This movie? This movie?? "Care Bears: Journey to Joke-a-Lot" is a cinematic tour de force powered entirely by rainbow giggles, glittery nonsense, and the kind of nostalgia that hits harder than a Care Bear Stare to the face. Is the animation a little wonky? Is the plot completely bananas? YES. AND I WOULDN'T CHANGE A THING.

Watching this felt like being dunked in a cotton candy milkshake of childhood joy and left to float in a pool of pure whimsy. I laughed, I cried, I questioned my reality-but in the best possible way. The songs? Bops. The jokes? HILARIOUS (if you're 7 or just easily amused like me). The vibes? Immaculate.

To anyone who says this movie isn't good: I regret to inform you that you just hate fun. And whimsy. And probably sunshine and unicorn stickers too. Let the bears have their joke kingdom! Let me cry-laugh through the absurdity! LET US ALL EMBRACE THE CHAOS OF JOKE-A-LOT!

Long live Funshine Bear. 10/10. Would journey again.