As the last dying gasps of 80s culture wheezed out of the mouth of 1990, the death rattle that was ‘Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue’ was the yellowish chunk of phlem that passed the lips of the decade that gave us ‘Cola Wars’.

A blatant act of Propaganda, its actually quite the curiosity to see this piece of ‘Just say no’ history in an age where, for a not insignificant chunk of the globe, Marijuana isnt just decriminalized, its celebrated. This 25(ish) minute short (bookended by ads for the ronald mcdonald childrens charity which almost CERTAINLY wouldnt be made today) isnt here for nuance or discussion…it’s here to say ‘Weed bad, Crack bad. Dont do it.’ and thats it.

Essentially its a play on ‘A Christmas Carol’ with a teen called Michael getting into weed as a preteen and slowly being led towards crack by his pressuring peers. His Sister finds his stash box and then…for some reason…a load of cartoons come to life and try to convince Michael to give up his wayward life of smoking a joint every few days (OH MY GOD) while Whinnie the Pooh tries to convince Michaels sister Cory to rat Michael out to his parents. Its…a jarring watch to say the least.

The scripts honestly kind of bland…once you get past the VERY surreal moments this special has, such as Bugs bunny talking about joints, Whinnie the Pooh knowing what drugs are…and possibly the most jarring thing IN this special…the fact that Michelangelo from the teenage mutant ninja turtles and Daffy Duck are both staunch ANTI drugs…when in ANY other reality they would be stoned off their arses. This things actually just kind of dull.

It uses the ‘Christmas Carol’ framework of showing Michael his past, present and future to try and scare him straight…but it doesnt quite work, because…the idea with the ‘Christmas Carol’ setup is that its supposed to show the ‘scrooge’ of the piece that his life was good before the change, not great in the present and dire in the future…but here? the past and the present arnt really distinct enough to stand apart…and the future goes WAY to the extreme having him injecting heorin into his eye sockets and looking for a visible vein that doesnt have track marks.

This isnt to downplay the terrible problems with addiction, But I feel the propaganda of ‘Just dont start’ probably did more harm than good in society. Because it created a layer of mystery, particularly around weed which…once kids of this generation actually DID smoke it, and found out it DIDNT turn them into snake headed drug dealers or zombies. Made them question what else the government and these charities had been lying to them about, potentially causing them to ACTUALLY get onto hard drugs because they were lied to about how bad weed was.

This special tries to use scare tactics, when in reality a more frank conversation about what it is, its usage and how, like smoking, it can be a bad habit that doesnt really do you any favours…rather than ‘IT’LL KILL YOU IF YOU TAKE A PUFF!!!’ (which is what they went for) probably would have deflated the whole thing a bit more.

Outside of that framework…there just isnt a whole lot going on, the cartoon characters all feel a bit out of place and weird, almost like they’re ‘off brand’ bootlegs of the characters we know and love. They all get to do a couple of signature tropes, but non of it is funny or interesting. I think its probably down to the fact that its a crowded cast, and they had to reduce all these characters down to their base elements just to be able to squeeze them all in and make them look/sound vaguely authentic…it doesnt work. half the characters vanish for most of the runtime after the 5 minute mark (where on EARTH do the smurfs go?!)

The dialogues stiff, you can tell when the character script writers left the room, and the charity ‘just say no’ script writers stepped in.

Its biggest flaw? misunderstanding its audience. It spends most of the runtime split between talking to teenage Michael about how drugs are ‘whack’ and will turn him into a zombie man, but we also spend a significant portion of time with Cory getting a more surface level introduction to drugs as a concept…the problem is, Michaels a teen, Cory is supposed to be 8-10 years old, and 90% of the cartoons in this special were from shows aimed at 4-8 year olds. It feels like they wanted to do a more YA special about the dangers of drug addiction AND a more kiddy friendly version thats more of an introduction to why drugs are bad…But you cant do both of those things in the same special successfully, because the YA stuff will ostracize the kids, and the younger kid stuff is common knowledge to your average ‘Beavis and Butthead’ watching 13 year old…

as such it tries to do both, doesnt really deliver anything meaningful for either side and then starts trying to shill you into donating to disabled childrens charities. Its trying to do too much in not enough time. had they JUST focussed on Michael, or just followed Cory watching Michael deteriorate from the outside, it could have been more meaningful…as it stands it achieves neither and feels very hollow.

The majority of my positive thoughts really come from the art direction and animation…Which isnt amazing, but is fairly solid and just about does the job. its colourful, creative and while it maybe cuts some corners on the animation itself to save some money. There were WAY worse attempts in the 80s…Oh and the soundtrack, while fitting, is about 7 years too late to be cool or relevant…its cringey.

All in all? I went into ‘Cartoon Allstars’ hoping for a crazy and surreal time watching some much beloved childrens icons taking on a subject that REALLY is above their paygrade…and…while that IS what happens…its not nearly as entertaining as you’d expect. its a lazily put together extended PSA that felt like an old drugs PSA from the early 80s that they’d just decided to slap some cartoon characters onto…I came away somewhat dissapointed and really kind of hoping there had been more to it.

Also; seriously, you’re telling me Daffy doesnt smoke? get outta here.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/cartoon-all-stars-to-the-rescue/