One of my all time favorites.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This TV special was actually shown at my elementary school (I can't remember if I saw it on TV). Taking the most popular cartoon characters of the day (Bugs Bunny, Garfield, a Ninja Turtle, etc.), as merchandise that come to life to save a boy from drug addiction, Cartoon All-Stars acts as a public service announcement warning kids to stay away from marijuana and other illegal drugs.It's a novelty to see all these characters in one cartoon (copyrights usually prevent that), and the underlying purpose is noble, but the end result isn't impressive at all. The laugh count stands at zero (maybe kids would like it more), and the musical number is a bust. As a story it lacks consistency and logic (the character made out of smoke can go through a brick wall, yet is trapped in a garbage can). More to the point, as a public service announcement, it's a failure. The cartoon is too heavy-handed; the kid seeing himself in green (looking into a magic mirror and then a crystal ball), seems over the top and dishonest. More importantly, did it work? Did this special actually stop kids from trying drugs? As I mentioned, my class and I saw this in school; I never did any illegal drugs, but plenty of others did. At most, after watching this a child may take the message for a little while, but by the time he or she gets to high school they've outgrown Winnie the Pooh and will likely experiment with marijuana anyway.So what do we have at the end of the day? Cartoon All-Stars turns out to be a historical oddity, a place to go for unintentional comedy and surreal material. It also glorifies consumption of corporate merchandise- the Garfield lamp and the Kermit clock, both likely made in Asian sweat shops, will save the day. But that's a different issue. Show this to your kids if you feel you must, but don't expect any results.

Do you kids love Kermit and The Chipmunks and Bugs Bunny and a dozen other cartoon characters? Then you'll love their preachy anti-marijuana short film, featuring characters at random who have nothing to do with the plot, and are only there so kids can say "Hey, I love that character, I don't want to smoke!" This is a seriously bad movie, and just on how bad it was, we can only hope it turned more kids to pot just for future reference that movies like this are horrible and don't work!The plot makes no sense at all. This kid Michael is just flung from one set piece to another, with well known 80s cartoon characters inhabiting various set pieces. The thing just feels like a stupid nightmare, and undoubtedly the director took a few tabs of acid to come up with such odd and trippy sequences. The characters who normally would try to be making jokes aren't funny in the least, and this thing just comes off as really preachy. Marijuana is shown throughout, and the villain of the film is an anthromorphic smoke creature, but never are the actual effects of marijuana use touched upon. The cartoon characters talk about how it ruins lives, but never actually talk about what it does. The only results from smoking actually shown are Michael looking in a mirror and seeing himself as a weird goon. Of course, pot smoking makes people look like the phantom of the opera, that makes sense. Well kids, now that you know that, don't do it.The song in this thing is ear piercingly bad. Most of the kids that watched this had to have gone deaf from this out of tune cartoon warbling. There was literally no reason for most of these characters to appear, except to cover all the popular cartoons of the era. Slimer from Ghostbusters, the Smurfs, the Chipmunks all have pointless cameos that add nothing. Most of the roles are pointless, but their's are the worst.This is an overly preachy short, that tries to hit kids despite that it has no logic behind it's method, and what better way to tell kids what not to do than with all their favorite cartoon characters together talking about it. This is a horrible mash-up of characters, and despite that it may have worked to help kids not smoke, it scares without information, instead of informing and using logic. And if smoking pot will make all your favorite cartoon characters appear, then why not try it?My rating: BOMB out of ****. 27 mins.

All of these characters will be familiar to people of my generation that grew up on these TV shows. I vaguely remember watching this in my elementary school. This video is very strange because of its blending of name-recognition commercialism and realism in dealing with a serious topic, an "Alice and Wonderland" style, a realistic ending that doesn't quite solve the problem, and the fact that so many different characters from each with different copyright holders appear together. Its easy to laugh at this film, but its also kind of astonishing that it was ever produced in the first place.Did this show have an impact on its intended audience? Of course, its impossible to say for sure, but I'd like to think that it did. Seeing it now that I'm older and working in television animation was quite an interesting experience for me. Very few films, animated or otherwise, capture a moment in history so completely as this one captures the United States circa 1990.

This film spends a lot of time preaching against marijuana. However, the plot and visuals are so insane that it seems more like the poster-child for LSD.Plot: The heroic struggle of Michael as he battles his drug addiction while being subjected to the humiliation brought on by the likes of Winnie the Pooh and Papa Smurf.Yea, yea, there's a good message, but it's obscured by the fact that the writers have taken a rather stale PSA idea and tried stretching it into 30 minutes. This includes a song sequence, where you're told that there's a million, rational ways to say "No!" such as "I can't smoke pot, I have homework!"The writers can't make up their minds what to do with the characters they've brought in royalty-free. At first we see they all have to hide from the human characters, but within five minutes we see them all running around in plain sight without anyone noticing. Soon they begin interacting with the human cast, and the only one who's even slightly disturbed by this fact is not the drug-abusers, it's the little sister who talks to her teddy bear (Pooh, by the way.) Further, there's the little drug demon floating around. Because you know, pushers don't give kids drugs. He too is ambiguous - while he might be symbolic of Michael's addiction and hence is not supposed to be seen by other people, he laters goes and haunts little Corey to get HER into drugs. So I guess he's...uhhh.....moving on!The whole plot finally culminates in some insane sequence in which Michael is in what would appear to be the Saturday Morning Carnival of Souls, aka a theme park from hell where the various cartoon characters beat him up and ignore him and stuff. For example, Miss Piggy eats him in a sandwich and spits him out. If the writers were not high when writing this, I must recommend they try getting high because they can't get crazier than this. Of course, the film ignores the fact that Michael's been having highs for two years by this point, so why this tripping sequence would frighten him is beyond me.I realize I'm completely whaling on this film, but I actually just saw it again because I went through the trouble of tracking it down on eBay because of it's sheer infamy of being a BAD cartoon. The level of unintentional humor is is brilliant. Take this scene for example - Michael's dad is rooting through the fridge for a beer. He notices many of them missing and mentions it to his wife. The ever-observant Mom tells him "Don't worry, you probably just drank them last night watching football." While we're obviously supposed to be learning that Michael is drinking beer (in addition to the pot and crack), we instead read further in and realize - Hey kids, it's okay to have chemical dependencies as long as you're a grown-up! Scenes like this are worth the tiny price tag of this film. Oh yea, and the fact you get to hear Simon the Chipmunk say "Marijuana."