Well then cartoon this is a review that i've been putting of for a while now and well I thought it's finally time to get around to it and yeah it's as bad and as strange as others make it out to be so here is my review of the infamous Cartoon All-Stars To the Rescue.
The plot of this special basically is a kid is on drugs and a bunch of cartoon characters try to convince him not to do them anymore. The first of many mistakes that this special makes is that it demonizes all drugs all drugs aren't bad in fact some of them can and have been used to save lives the second mistake it makes is how the cartoons appear isn't consistent Bugs , Daffy , Tigger , Miss Piggy , Gonzo , Michaelangelo , Slimer and Huey, Dewey, and Louie all appear for no reason when all of the other characters are at least shown as either products or in pictures.
Starring in this weird thing is Ross Bagdasarian as Alvin and Simon , Townsend Coleman as Michaelangelo , Jim Cummings as Pooh and Tigger , Paul Fusco as Alf , Danny Goldman as Brainy Smurf , Janice Karman as Theodore and Lorenzo Music as Garfield.
Now the sad thing is this was the first time that both Bugs and daffy were played by someone other then Mel Blanc since he died before production could begin so in this special both were played by Jeff Bergman who is honestly good as the characters but the stuff both he and the rest of the cast are given to work with just isn't good and sadly that hinders all of the performances.
Before I get onto the animation I would like to point out that this is technically a Disney product since the executive producer of the special is Roy Disney and the company distributing the special on VHS was Buena Vista a company which was ran by the Walt Disney Company so even tho it doesn't have the Disney name on it they had some hand in the special.
The animation for the special was done by Wang Film Productions who's only claim to fame is this special and boy I can see why that is the case because the animation in this special is terrible even for 1990's standards it's bad and from what i can gather the production schedule for this was a pretty fast one which might explain why the animation is bad but if your making a drug PSA you'd think that alot more effort would go into the animation.
I have to bring this up again because it doesn't make any kind of sense but if your making an anti drug PSA then why the heck are bringing in Michelangelo who is perhaps the turtle who is most on drugs wouldn't make more sense if they had either Leo , Donny or Raph take his spot I know the makers of this special are choosing characters who the kids like but from a storyline perspective it makes no sense at all.
You want to know how much faith Disney had in this when the actual makers came to them to ask if they could use there characters the only characters Disney let them use was essentially there "B" characters so instead of Mickey , Donald , Minnie and Goofy we get Winnie The Pooh , Tigger and Huey, Dewey, and Louie and i'm not counting the muppets characters since they were still owned by Jim Henson at the time but even so that just goes to show you much faith they had in this special.
Now i'm British and I was born a few months (which for those who don't know was April 21st 1990 in America and June 22nd 1990 in the UK)before this special came out but from what I can recall stateside this thing was not promoted as an anti drug PSA in fact there was no scenes of the kids shown in any of the previews it was just the scenes showing the cartoon characters working together and that was it now I complain about hollywood lying to us in there trailers and it turns out that TV companies have been doing it since the freaking nineties guys people would have watched the special anyway because of the characters there was no need to lie to them.
Speaking of lieing to us there's two lies right in the poster for one Michelangelo who is in the special isn't featured anywhere on the poster and Smurfette isn't in the special but for some reason IS on the poster the only reason I can think of that they put her in the poster is because they thought it might make them seem sexist if they didn't include at least one female character but it makes them seem more sexist because she's not in the actual special.
Now for you disney nerds out there you'll be shocked to learn that this special features a song written by the late Howard Ashman and it's honestly the best thing in the entire piece which is saying something since it's a special featuring alot of great and funny characters and the music was done by the great Alan Menken among many others but the music isn't that good and the song "Wonderful Ways To Say No" is great or at least great by this specials standards.
Overall this special is as bad , as weird and as strange as they make it out to be and i'm glad that I didn't have to watch this when it first aired and no I don't agree with the IMDB score of 6 out of 10 and if you want to watch this special the only way you can see it is on Youtube because there's been no DVD release only a VHS release and so this special scores a 2 out of 10 from me.