Care Bears: Oopsy Does It!
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Care Bears: Oopsy Does It! is a computer-animated film released theatrically in the United States on August 4th, 2007 and later on DVD on October 23, 2007.
It was developed by American Greetings as part of the Care Bears' 25th anniversary, produced by SD Entertainment and the Hatchery, and distributed by Kidtoon Films theatrically and 20th Century Fox on home media. This is the first Care Bears movie made by a studio other than Nelvana, the Canadian company responsible for the previous feature length installments and most of the television episodes.
It is a reboot to the franchise and therefore unrelated to the television series and movies that preceeded it. It also serves as a pilot to Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot.
Plot
While villain Grizzle plots against the Care Bears, it is up to Oopsy Bear to come to their rescue.
Not-So-Careful Qualities
- To write down the first problem, you can just tell that it's a cash-in pilot from a mile away, considering that it is one of the many not-so-good movies SD Entertainment has been turning out in the late 2000s, especially since the late 2000s was a rough time for American Greetings. This one is exceptionally the CGI embodiment of this.
- While the CGI animation isn't all that bad and every character does move naturally, it looks rather mediocre, cheap-looking, and it can sometimes look uncanny, akin to an early PS2/GameCube video game. It clearly hasn't aged well since there are some models that look a bit grotesque, rubbery and stiff, particularly the non-regular cast.
- The writing is very subpar, and it feels lazy. The lyrics for most of the songs are so bad that they don't even feel like properly-written songs, but rather the bad kinds of songs that wouldn't even fit in context to this film (mainly because of how nobody sings when the songs are played as if they're pop songs).
- The dialogue is often awkward and out of place most of the time.
- Most of the scenes are underwhelming, boring, and mean-spirited. Much to the point that they feel like parodies of the Care Bears franchise, to the point of feeling rushed, even for Care Bears standards.
- Heaps of continuity errors: This film is quite difficult (practically impossible, really) to place within the greater continuity of all of the previous appearances of Bedtime Bear, Love-a-Lot Bear, Good Luck Bear, Tenderheart Bear, Wish Bear, Harmony Bear, True Heart Bear, Surprise Bear, Friend Bear, Best Friend Bear, Laugh-a-Lot Bear, and Amigo Bear since the film has very poor connections and poor continuities to the Care Bears franchise. This means that this film isn’t canon to those aforementioned appearances and therefore, set in an alternate continuity.
- Much like Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Movie, it gives a badly sugarcoated moral that everyone should accept everything about caring and sharing themselves with the grand opening unconditionally by a "the woohoo world is opening tomorrow" type of message that encourages tons of excessive consumerism and commercialism down everyone's throats. Which is also seems like a very confusing message.
- This movie is filled to the brim with generic Care Bear Stare commercialism.
- Almost all of the characters (aside from Oopsy, Funshine, and Grumpy) are bland, unlikeable, out of character or one-dimensional to the point of having very little to no personality, and are poorly written.
- Almost every message in each scene seems to have a "don't be selfish" message that is all told in a poorly executed way since nobody with a "selfish jerk" quality in any scene was done right. This ranges from the actually selfish characters never got their comeuppance nor learned anything meaningful about their mistakes (i.e. Grumpy Bear), to characters that are treated like a karmic "selfish jerk" type of character that was rather contradictory since they were presented as "butt-monkey"/"designated butt-monkey" types of characters in actuality, like Oopsy and Funshine themselves.
- Despite Grizzle being a running theme throughout this movie and was a rather big deal, this version of Grizzle is unremarkable, generic, overly safe, and completely bland villain. Much to the point that Grizzle was just a plot device for everyone getting into the grand opening.
- The film overall feels lazy and rather a disappointing attempt at creating what the new Care Bears accomplished but in 3D.
Careful Qualities
- Oopsy, Funshine, and Grumpy are all likable characters despite them being used poorly in the film. Even if Cheer, Share, Bedtime, Love-a-Lot, Good Luck, Tenderheart, Wish, Harmony, True Heart, Surprise, Friend, Best Friend, Laugh-a-Lot, and Amigo have very little characterization, they are all passable characters.
- The character designs are cute and are actually faithful to the Care Bears franchise.
- Good voice acting, particularly from Tabitha St. Germain, Ian James Corlett, Tracey Moore, Scott McNeil, and Ashleigh Ball.
- Every once in a while, there is a good visual joke or a actually funny line here and there. For example, Grumpy Bear asks Oopsy and Funshine the following question after he intentionally bumped into him, "Oopsy?"
- The CGI animation may be mediocre and sometimes uncanny, akin to an early PS2/GameCube video game, but it has its cute moments where it shines.
- Some characters have passable designs like the crowd at the start of the film for example.
- In fact, what's more, is that the CGI animation was also done by Polygon Pictures, who did the character modeling and setup for Vanguard's first film Valiant and their animation for Random Cartoons' short, "BoneHeads".
- Some bits of the music here and there can be nice to listen to.
- "We Are The Care Bears" by Kay Hanley, for example, is a opening theme song that even detractors of this film also enjoy listening to.
- Even the closing theme song "Caring Changes the World" also by Kay Hanley sounds nice to hear.
- It does teach us some good morals about helping others and keeping a good attitude no matter how badly the things you wish worked out go.
- While there are some mean-spirited and bad morals in most of the scenes, there's none that little kids would probably get.
- Because of this, it's not as bad as other horrendous films like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys, Santa vs. the Snowman 3D, In Search of Santa, Happily N'Ever After, or it’s sequel, Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple. Where it's not downright abysmal, but it's just a lazy, weak cash grab of Care Bears: Oopsy Does It! with little to no heart.
Reception
Care Bears: Oopsy Does It has a general score of 4.5/10 on IMDb.