MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘CARE BEARS’ STRICTLY FORMULA

“The Care Bears’ Adventure in Wonderland” (citywide) sends the determinedly cute little bruins into Lewis Carroll’s timeless fantasy world, where they have approximately the same affect the Vandals had on the Roman Forum.

Bits of the original “Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” are mixed with fragments of “The Prisoner of Zenda,” “Androcles and the Lion,” Bob Clampett’s “Porky in Wackyland” and the Three Stooges, and reduced to so much saccharine mincemeat in this new animated feature.

The White Rabbit stumbles into Care-A-Lot, the Care Bears’ home, to enlist their aid in finding Alice, a girl who looks exactly like the Princess of Wonderland. Alice must impersonate the Princess at her coronation, or the evil Wizard (who’s kidnaped the real Princess) will inherit the throne and “take all the wonderful out of Wonderland.” After a great deal of whining that she’s no one special, Alice helps defeat the Wizard in a rather choppy series of adventures.

This Alice leaves Wonderland with what passes for a profound lesson in these films: “You’re as special as you think you are.” But she doesn’t really establish herself as special--or accomplish much of anything--through her own initiative. A Care Bear (or one of their relatives) is always on hand to assist her with magic, as a sort of ursa ex machina.

None of this has much to do with the original books. The encounter between the Care Bears and a beast called the Jabberwocky demonstrates the film makers’ slipshod approach to their model. “Jabberwocky” is a poem in “Through the Looking Glass”; the monster “with eyes of flame” described in that poem is the Jabberwock. As Carroll’s work is now in the public domain, there’s apparently no way to protect it from this kind of cartoon plundering.

Many elements in the film--the croquet mallet-flamingos, the umbrella-bodied birds and the fall down the rabbit hole--owe more to the 1951 Disney version than to Carroll’s descriptions or John Tenniel’s original illustrations. The Mad Hatter does terrible vocal impersonations of various characters as he changes hats--a gimmick borrowed from the Warners cartoon “Bugs’ Bonnet.” The artists try to give some of the minor characters the frenetic insanity of Bob Clampett’s early shorts, but the animation is too stiff to convey that zany energy.

Aside from an occasional reference to Carroll, “The Care Bears’ Adventure” is just standard 1980s children’s fare. The same kind of minimal plot, sappy songs, badly timed gags, limited animation and smarmy message have been used in so many recent cartoons that even small children must be tiring of the pattern.

Given the hundreds of millions of dollars Care Bear products have earned, their creators could afford to underwrite a first-class animated film. In fact, this third Care Bears feature is such weary formula that it makes the first two look good--no easy task.

The previous Care Bears movies were commercially successful, but they were released when nothing else “for children” was in the theaters. “The Care Bears’ Adventure in Wonderland” has to compete with Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Parents of small children have a choice between a classic the entire family can enjoy and a shopworn exercise in marketing that will bore anyone whose age or IQ has passed beyond single-digit land.