Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990)

 

Director: Milton Gray, Marsh Lamore, Robert Shellhorn, Mike Svayko and Karen Peterson

Screenplay: Duane Poole and Tom Swale

Voice Cast: George C. Scott as Smoke; Jason Marsden as Michael; Don Messick as Papa Smurf; Lorenzo Music as Garfield; Laurie O'Brien as Baby Piggy / Mom; Lindsay Parker as Corey; Janice Karman as Theodore (voice); Jim Cummings as Tigger / Winnie the Pooh; Ross Bagdasarian Jr. As Alvin / Simon (voice); Jeff Bergman as Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck; Townsend Coleman as Michelangelo / Dad; Russi Taylor as Huey / Dewey / Louie / Baby Gonzo; Frank Welker as Slimer / Baby Kermit / Hefty Smurf; Barbara Bush as Self; George Bush as Self; Paul Fusco as Gordon 'ALF' Shumway

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Now I'm seeing ducks!

Beginning with the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity, with Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue recovered from a VHS rip, we start with an advertising where children of various disabilities and social standings smile to the camera in idyllic commercial depictions of childhood, happy and with a children's chorus evoking the ideals of charity and contributing to those in need. We forget that whatever one's opinion of McDonalds and any corporation in general¹, with this the fast food franchise's charity part of their public face, any business has to account for the world around them. This includes various attempts at charity and "community service" for a lack of a better term depending on whether they sincerely desire to help the public or if for dubious means. This is also important to think of as that charity also helped produce this curious combination of public scares and pop culture, a very odd one where, not since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and all the hurdles to get Warner Brothers and Disney to agree to let their characters co-exist on the same screen, this is done for the sake of a fear of children getting into narcotics and done as a public health service.

Likewise, the prelude to this infamous cartoon special about saying no to drugs also includes an address by the then-president George Bush Sr. with his wife Barbara Bush, hoping this work would be advancement on the war on drugs the USA was involved in this period. It is surreal to envision or even see this piece, from a Buena Vista International distributed production; the imagine of Donald Trump, when he was president, sat on a couch with Ivanka Trump, addressing an audience like this feels a foreign and peculiar world on long ago. Baraka and Michelle Obama maybe, but what Cartoon All-Stars... is, if also a vague and misguided attempt at social consciousness, is also a fascinating time capsule that, were it not for all the rights negotiations that may be involved to re-release it, does show a period where children from the USA especially grew up with "say no to drugs" campaigning, this just one of the various ways to promote the message over various pop culture. There is even a reference to Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in dialogue which, alongside how peculiar it was a horror villain known as a child murderer managed to be referenced even in this production, goes to show the era it was made in was a time ago. The reason why this one is known and infamous is that, for this tale of a teenage boy named Michael, an added surrealism of having this writer's name, we have the likes of Garfield interacting with the Muppet Babies to help him kick drugs. Where the evil smoke figure on the opposite should, tempting poor Michael to crack, is voiced by the legendary actor George C. Scott, and where it effectively turns into an animated version of Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), only with the addict protagonist seeing Donald Duck's nephews rather than bats...who then start to sing.

Now the layman will be aware that the issue of drugs in modern culture has yet to be resolved. Marijuana being legalised in states in America is a huge change - where Simon of the Chipmunks is able to inform everyone what one is but it is still considered the gateway drug to worse narcotics - but instead of mocking Cartoon All-Stars... however, the bigger tragedy is that this was the work of earnestness by conservative/corporate USA, whether the people animating and voicing the film were actually earnest in the goal or not, which was inevitably going to be doomed to squareness about the subject. It actually feels like a perversity in itself, in truth, when you have these characters materialise from the toys and possessions Michael's younger sister has (the likes of the Smurfs to Winnie the Pooh), looking and sounding as we may have grown up with them, only for the harsh reality of them to have to encounter drug addiction. Even if the box hidden under Michael's bed is full of weird alien forms of narcotic tools, it feels wrong for this to have transpired, despite the many parodies which may have existed. Winnie the Pooh's obsession with honey and demeanour should raise suspicions, Garfield was always cynical, and out of all the Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtles to be included, the only one being Michelangelo the party dude feels strange unless he is a teetotaller surfer dude, but with the other characters it feels like a moral transgression if you think of how these characters have been brought into the subject where, for all the dancing around actually talking about real drugs and their effects, "crack" is actually referenced at one point.

For myself, missing this anti-drug campaigning by being too young and British, I did nonetheless grow up with some of these characters. I remember Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, the Ninja Turtles and Garfield cartoons. Then there are figures only know in the UK in hushed voices and Simpsons references like Alf: a cat eating alien (who threatens to eat Garfield in the one darkly humorous line) who started as a live action character, got an animated work to qualify here and eventually had a cancelled talk show in 2004.  And in some cases, there are characters being used for this moralising which is actually a transgression against them rather than feeling too innocent to be involved. The rumour, which has never been substantiated and was eventually debunked², was that Jim Davidson, the creator of Garfield, did not get his permission to include Garfield which compromised future screenings. I am, however, thinking of someone like Bugs Bunny, who here with Daffy Duck was the first time someone else ever took on the role after Mel Blanc. God knows anyone who has actually seen at least one of the old Bugs Bunny shorts where Tex Avery/Friz Freleng/Bob Clampett school made him the ultimate libertine of cartoons, who dressed as women constantly and was an utter spiteful misanthrope to suckers, the kind of figure whose morally concerned version here vastly contrasts a character more likely to be on jazz cigarettes himself.

The fact all these characters, including their voice actors, were pulled together is spectacular, and the animation is not bad. Even for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which I have already referred to, it took Steven Spielberg at the height of his powers (just as a production) to be in the same room so rivals Disney and Warner Brothers would allow Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny onscreen together, and even then there had to be rules set in stone. Here, under the auspices of protecting children from drugs, more influence was found if dooming this special due to the obvious copyright issues now to deal with. In terms of voice acting, whilst there are some legendary if underappreciated voice actors here (like Frank Welker, the living zoological database for animal real or imagined), the one big gleeful discovery for a cineaste is one of the only animated roles for George C. Scott as the evil Smoke, a tempting vapour who promoted those evil nasty drugs on young adolescents. It was probably a pay day, but George C. Scott was one of those character actors who could make any production better just because he was there and he was the best thing in Cartoon All Stars... as to be expected. In fact, the Smoke character, a purple cloud of smoke in a suit, is the one intelligent aspect of the short, Smoke's temptations and threats having a weight to them with the legendary Dr. Strangelove actor voice and that the dialogue does not shy away from him still being a threat even when Michael kicks the drugs.

The message itself is vague and confused, and that is the ultimate reason anyone understandably mocks the short. It does not dare try to explain why drugs are harmful, throwing weed under the bus in the same light as crack, when they are in different categories, and depicting the damage caused by them through nightmare scenarios that feel like they are drug hallucinations themselves rather than the real grim toll they cause. From the deranged theme park of roller coasters through the brain matter and the hall of distorting mirrors, to a musical number where the song is about saying no to drugs in various ways, it never dares scare children with the truth of the harm drugs can cause. Neither does it even admit why anyone would be hooked barring some platitudes of curiosity and stress. What it does instead is just a fantasy scenario - where Bugs Bunny borrows a time machine "from some coyote" to take Michael to the past where he first took weed, all in black and white in one clever touch, before going on to a series of scenes of him suffering hallucinogenic nightmares, including a sewer full of multicoloured sludge or a carnival where a giant Miss Piggy sucks him up in a drink's straw. The many shots of what Michael will look like ravaged by drugs instead looks like a zombie, not factual accuracy to the real toll of narcotics, where animation in its exaggeration betrays the message.

If the finale of the short did not scare you off drugs, there are moments where it does completely contradict itself, not at least a father whose beer drinking is not thrown under the bus too in the one line it is brought up in. The entire scenario is the product of squares pulling their punches and being uncomfortable even trying to talk about drugs, only referencing a few and leaving the others vague which is a dangerous thing in itself, the sense that instead we will put a really ominous synth drone when crack is mentioned and that will be enough, all in a video gaming arcade when this happens to emphasis the clichés of that being a den of debauchery. The only sense of adult thoughtfulness is that aforementioned line of dialogue that Smoke, Scott's villain, promises to return at the end like the nagging potential for relapse, a detail which is an actual struggle for some addicts and the one only honest consideration. The rest is deeply silly and not surprisingly was the sort of thing dope heads could smoke pot and laugh at as was the case for Reefer Madness (1936). In terms of a cultural artefact, I do find it compelling and recommend people find this; in fact, as with any project, I wish it was legally available as, even as an animated project, contextually it is a really unique piece and, in its own perverse existence, is watchable.  The weirdness of the project in itself is enough to recommend anyone look into.

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1) I have softened to McDonalds, both because in Britain fast food stores like it, as American exports, exist in a very different way to the image I have had of them in the United States; in America, you have tomes like Fast Food Nation, where the 2006 Richard Linklater adaptation will always stick in mind for the moment about faecal matter in the burgers, or the 2004 documentary Super Size Me demonising them but in England, especially as a result of a pandemic, their banality as regular people work hard jobs in their kitchens to provide food for regular people working hard jobs has become more significant. Particularly as someone who is working class myself, seeing them as an inherently evil corporate monolith is overly simplistic as, blending in the background next to a supermarket where my closest is, it just seems a gaudy building where people on both sides of the till exist, with their individual existences. Also, whilst I prefer other burgers, I have to admit at some point, after the toil of 2020,  just binging on their menu and giving in to stuffing one's face just once would seem far less like you are selling your soul nowadays as I type this, that and their McFlurries were always good.

2) Mark Evanier, head writer of Garfield and Friends (1988-94), debunked the rumour on the Cartoon Research Facebook page HERE with the following text in October 2013:

"How about if I confirm it? Jim knew all about the special, he okayed Garfield's participation and approved whatever had to be approved.

I believe the original plan, which got all the various copyright holders to agree to let their characters participate called for limited airing."