Good start, but then it gets ruined

A Brilliant Conflict

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

This short was a few years before my time but I did have the misfortune to see it only once, and that was in about 1998 on CITV. Basically, it's a Cartoon Drug Prevention Scheme starring the most famous Cartoon Stars of the day including ALF, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Muppet Babies, Garfield, TMNT, etc. For a kid growing up at this time it would have seemed like a Miracle, all these stars coming together in one place seemed almost biblical. So with pretty much every kid with a TV set waiting for this amazing spectacle to appear, first thing we get is George Bush Senior and the First Lady, and by no means in Cartoon form either. I'm sure for a kid they'd either consider it a damning blow to their confidence or a preceding advert featuring George Bush giving a lecture on the American home. It's not the best way to start a cartoon special featuring all your favourite cartoon characters and after the first 5 seconds, most children would have switched off completely to all he had to say, so basically it was a waste of the Presidents time.But after he's done with his speech, the cartoon starts and everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting to see what adventures were in store for them and their Cartoon Characters. Marijuana...Yes, for a child uninitiated in the indecencies of the adult world, this seems pretty unbelievable, their favourite Cartoon characters who'd they'd be expecting to be flying off on some mystical adventure over the rainbow are going to spend the next 25 minutes lecturing them on drug abuse, and that's what this whole Cartoon is all about, each individual Cartoon Star coming up to this kid with drug problems and telling him that he's going to be a walking corpse soon enough. They even have an Alan Menken song just to rub it in. At this point, most kids would probably be searching their house for their father's draw of Nostalgic firearms so they can either shoot the TV or shoot themselves. But thankfully I didn't get to that part because I lost all interest after about 10 minutes.Basically, this Cartoon is flawed to begin with. It is trying to give a life lesson in such a way that no child would be interested. A more subtle lesson would be much better, like the one given in Ozzy and Drix about smoking and other abuse to your body. You could say that its like an Animated Xanadu, all your favourite things coming together in one place but for a pointless reason. Also, the whole lesson is flawed from the start as it basically says that if you smoke marijuana all your cartoon characters will appear. I think I'll test this theory by going out, getting a joint from my local dealer, smoking it, coming back and I expect Alvin and the Chipmunks to be sitting on my bed so I can shake their hand and break out a musical guitar number with them. If they're not there when I get back, I'll be demanding a refund pronto...

One of the greatest works of Anti-Drug propaganda, this time aimed at small children. The video opens with a Ronald McDonald House commercial that is humorous on a bad taste level ("Peel them taters!") Then look who's here, if it isn't then president George Bush and his wife Barbara, historically famous for raising the Anti-Christ. They give a well meaning message to the grade-school set, which obviously didn't take when you look at all that heroin those kids took a few years later. The half-hour animated special features simply everybody: Bugs Bunny, Winnie the Pooh, Muppet Babies, the Smurfs. Slimer from Ghostbusters, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield and Alf, a We Are The World of dope hatred. "Drugs don't stand a chance against these guys!" says the tagline. Besides the obvious lesson that smoking a joint will make you try crack the next day, we find that if you smoke pot, you will hurt the Muppet Babies inside your brain. You'll derail the roller coaster inside your mind and make Kermie and Piggie fall out. Of course, it was pot that put those Muppet Babies in the Roller Coaster in your brain in the first place, so puzzle that one. Also, when you bottom out and turn into a shrunken zombie, said to happen on the third day after your first joint, then you'll have to face the man in the mirror: Alf. This is ironic considering all the heroin the head writer for Alf was shooting at the time (read Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight). A drug war relic. Eight Leaves: Kind. A drug movie's drug movie. Will make your eyes red with happiness.

When I was in seventh grade, our health teacher made us watch this movie. He prefaced it with a Serious Business Discussion about drugs, and then somehow managed to show us this with a straight face. Yes, it's THAT ridiculous . . . people were laughing hysterically throughout the whole movie and several people commented that if being high meant you got to meet the Smurfs, they wanted to get high.The teacher refused to comment on whether or not he intended this movie to seriously affect us.We were all born in the same year this movie was made, but I for one had seen all the cartoons with characters in the movie except The Smurfs, so it's not really true that you can't like it if you weren't young in the late eighties/ early nineties.The only thing that could possibly have made this movie better is if the Care Bears were in it.

If there's one thing I want to distinguish myself from all the other great reviewers here, it's that I am the Queen of Finding Strange Movies in Thrift and Dollar Stores. That said, you can't possibly imagine how happy I was when I found this one. I can even remember that Saturday morning when *every* station simulcast it, so you were stuck if you wanted to watch something else (then again, I guess that was the idea). As a kid, I didn't know if I liked the way all the different characters were stuck together (there are some crossovers that just do *not* work). But I guess the special had it's intended effect. Don't do drugs because you will have nightmares about the Muppets.Now, if you watch this as an adult, on the other hand, you will be treated to the *strangest* anti-drug movie this side of "Reefer Madness". I think I'll just leave it at that before I get into trouble.