Bratz Go To Paris

This is the first time I have ever seen a girl shake her butt under a blow dryer.

First I want everyone to watch this clip

I hope you were able to find everything wrong with that.

Now I don't think the Bratz need any introduction. They were the Hit dolls in the early 2000's until Mattel got them pulled off the shelves and when they tried to make a comeback, Monster High stomped them in the dirt. Next year they are supposed to make another comeback, but honestly I don't think they will ever be top dolls again with Monster High here.

Let me start off the review by saying that this is not a movie. It's actually a three part episode of the 4kids Bratz TV show from back in 2006. Since they advertise this as a standalone movie, there are many confusing bits that would be answered only if you were familiar with the actual show.

Story:

The story is that a friend of the Bratz has recruited them to be secret agents on a mission to find out who is poisoning fashion models and making their bones age, therefore, making them old.

Characters:

The Bratz themselves are very uninteresting. They act like how an adult would assume teenage girls would act. Some may argue that they are supposed to be realistic, but in reality, girls have more to their personality than boys and fashion. The best I can do is that Jade is the creative one, Cloe is the outgoing one, Yasmin is a writer and Sasha is the stereotypical Black girl. Do they do anything to show their differences, NO. The side-characters and the villain are equally as dull.

Animation

It's awful...just awful. I can't find the company who did the animation so I have to assume that it was done in house by MGA (The company that makes the dolls). The characters walk around on static backgrounds which makes the environment look dead. The colors are incredibly dry and the character models leave a lot to be desired. One of the most offending parts however, is the hair. I like the fact that they didn't just make one texture and actually put in some effort to make individual strands, but it doesn't work. Their long strands of hair seem to go through some type of obstacle course when they move their heads or wave their hands through their hair. It just looks awful, especially on Cloe. Their are many times when someone tries to touch something or pick something up or when their hair wants to recede from their scalps that you will see things phase through one another.

There are some fight scenes that for the most part are well done if not a bit brutal for a show aimed at little girls. (Cloe gets her face smashed into a wall, cracking it, Her hair yanked back and is forced to drink poison. While drinking it she was clearly choking, she then proceeds to kick her attacker who then violently falls down some stairs.)

Music:

The music consists of generic early 2000's R&B/POP Music. Not bad I must say. But the scores are very forgettable

Sexualization:

Let me get this out of the way. I love Barbie, Monster High and Winx Club. I understand that their tiny waists and sometimes short skirts may lead people to think that they can cause girls to have body image issues and may even make people consider them slutty. But the things they do and how they act prove that they are not bimbos walking around looking for lustful satisfaction. I don't think Bratz will make kids have body issues either.....BUT, The way they move and the way they act in this "movie" is a bit disturbing. You saw that "Baby" clip at the beginning of this review. the way they move their shoulders and hips is increasingly flamboyant and some may consider it sexual. There is even a scene where a girl (not one of the Bratz) is bent over shaking her butt under a blow drier in an attempt to dry it off after falling in the toilet. The position she was in can be considered by many to be suggestive (Kids most likely won't catch this but older teens and adults will go "Wha???").

What Can Kids Learn:

I would hope that a child would learn nothing from this. This is for pure entertainment (If you can call it that). The only good message I could find was "never leave your friends behind" while the only other message seemed to imply that there is no beauty in old age.

Overall:

This was bad. Horrible Animation, sub-par voice acting, bad script and a lackluster adventure.  Bratz is in the bottom of the bin when it comes to direct to DVD movies. There is no quality whatsoever here. If you like Bratz you may like this movie just to see your favorite dolls in action, if you are anyone else, you are missing absolutely nothing. It baffles me that girls would eat this stuff up. I mean yeah their fashion is cool, but when you make a "movie" you need more than that to keep the ball rolling.

HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED

Care Bears Welcome To Care-A-Lot

Probably the weakest The Hub has to offer but still a decent kids show

Care Bears Welcome To Care-A-Lot is the latest Animated adaption of the American Greetings property. The show follows the adventures of 7 Care Bears: Harmony, Grumpy, Funshine, Share, Cheer, TenderHeart and Wonderheart.

Story

Each episode follows a series of different formulas. Where one episode involves the bears trying to help a visiting kid get through a problem they are facing in the human world, another will have the bears personalities clashing. For the most part the episodes get the job done, but the episodes with the bears arguing with each other are far more entertaining that the ones with the visiting kids

Characters:

Share-Bear:

Share is the motherly figure of the group. She loves to cook tasty treats for all her friends in Care-A-Lot. Acting as the voice of reason, she tries her best to diffuse a lot of arguments. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have her own share of confrontations. She doesn't have many conflicts but when she does, she is shown to be passive aggressive. Her most memorable conflict was with Grumpy. Since she is the go-to person for sweets an treats, she doesn't really appreciate being outdone. She went as far as to frame someone for destroying Grumpy's stove to get back in the spotlight. Overall, not the most interesting of the bunch most of the time.

Funshine-Bear:

Probably my second favorite Bear. Funshine lives up to his name. He is all about sports and loves to stay active. Sometimes his love of fun gets in the way of his duties and can sometimes cloud his judgement. It would come to no surprise that most of his fights are with Grumpy considering that they are polar opposites. He is also shown to somewhat ignorant to people who are  physically handicapped since he assumes that they can't reach his level of fun. At the end of the day, he will admit when he is wrong and how he could have acted differently.

Tender-Heart and Wonder-Heart:

Meh.. Tender Heart is the seemingly the oldest and wisest of all the bears and he seems to be in charge of Care-A-Lot. Wonder Heart is basically a clone of Apple Bloom. She is more interesting when she isn't the focus of the episode. Like her name suggests, she spends a lot of time Wondering about things. For the most part she wonders what her belly badge does.

Cheer-Bear

My least favorite Bear. She spends all her time cheering. She tries her best to help people and cheer them up but has problems asking for help herself. As should be expected, she has issues with Grumpy, but Harmony won't hesitate to start confrontations with her from time to time.

Harmony-Bear

Harmony is the bossy boots of the group. She is very theatrical and loves to sing.  Since she is in charge of the many organizations of Care-A-Lot, she constantly hassles the other bears on their duties. She gets into conflict with every bear due to her stern no foolishness personality. Like her name she wants everyone to work together and do the best they can.

Grumpy-Bear

My favorite Bear. Somehow he is more fleshed out than the other bears and I don't think that it was intentional. Grumpy is very irritable and likes to be alone. He's not necessarily mean, but he has a short fuse and doesn't know the best way to tell others to leave him alone. He has conflict with everybear but it is more common with Funshine, Harmony and Cheer. At the end of the day he does care about his friends well being and will occasionally share his food (which he loves) out of the goodness of his heart.

Animation

The series is animated by Moonscope (Popular from Code Lyoko). The backgrounds and character models are bright and colorful, but somehow dry. The characters are all very expressive and lively. My only gripe is that each character looks exactly the same aside from different color pallets and belly badges.

Music

The music gets the job done. Harmony sings most of the songs and sounds good. It isn't until the whole cast joins in that it falls apart.

What Kids Can Learn:

Kids can learn how to deal with people of varying personalities other than just writing that person off as weird. It could also teach them to learn things from each other, or see things from different perspectives.

Overall

Care Bears Welcome To Care-A-Lot is a decent kids show that shows a group of friends with different personalities facing everyday challenges. Most episodes are just decent, but some episodes are well written and executed.

RECOMMENDED

Strawberry Shortcake 2003 Review

Berry Bad Adventures

After watching all 3 generations of Strawberry Shortcake cartoons (The 80s cartoon, 2003 cartoon which is the one i’m reviewing and Berry Bitty Adventures) I can honestly say that this one is the weakest. It suffers from common things that cartoons aimed at 5-10 year old girls in the early-mid 2000’s suffered from.

For starters, it amazes me that you would make a show for little kids and have characters this BLAND. Each character is equally boring and they don’t have much of a personality. They act certain ways only when the plot demands it. For example there is one episode where two characters become selfish and greedy while digging up sand dollars, it’s very obvious that they only acted that way so that the plot would be able to move on. You neither expect that from them or are surprised due to the fact that they are all just hollow shells. It’s like “Oh this episode deals with getting over shyness, lets make one of the characters shy for this episode”. This might keep the attention of three year olds due to the colorful (otherwise mediocre) animation. But Five and Six year-olds who are starting to understand and fully comprehend what people are talking about in conversations and pick up on a characters mannerisms will get bored fast.

The voice acting is HORRENDOUS. The characters are either really high pitched or incredibly monotone. The high pitched characters give of very little emotion while the monotone characters show none. Characters will have the exact same emphasis in there voice whether they have found something exciting or have been slapped across the face with a giant strawberry. I really don’t see how you plan to entertain kids with such dull voice acting.

The plot is next to nonexistent. They should have made 2 or 3 segments per episode instead of dragging one story on for 20 min. since it’s clear the writers don’t know how to do that. The episodes center around the typical formula where a character or characters discover a problem and must fix it, whether it’s a physical problem or an emotional problem. The issue with this is that there are hardly ever any twists and turns in the process of solving the issue. It’s just lets get from point A to point B and throw in some crappy songs to fill the time.

Oh and lets not forget the songs. They are awful. They aren’t catchy, they don’t rhyme and are altogether just unpleasant to listen to. The lyrics for these songs makes me want to cry and not in a good way. I’m sure many of you have been bored and sang a random song to a random tune, while singing didn’t follow the tune all the way and just made up words as you went along. That literally sums up every song in this show.

Most of the people I see giving this show good reviews are people who grew up with the show. To those people I must say that I am glad that they were able to get a kick out of the series (It lasted 4 seasons and had a CGi feature film, it must have done something right). But this show will struggle to hold the interests of Kids today. Even Dora the Explorer has much more exciting episodes (and I despise that football headed hybrid of Stewie Griffin and “Teach me Spanish” computer game). The show has poor writing, poor voice acting and mediocre animation.

I highly recommend you check out the 1980’s Strawberry Shortcake specials or watch “Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures” instead.

NOT RECOMMENDED