Drug War Stupidity and Film Review: "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue" is the Worst Anti-Drug Propaganda Film in the World

I like to write about drugs and I like to write about movies but it is rare that I get to do both at the same time. Luckily, a conversation that I was having yesterday caused me to flash back to my childhood and I remembered being forced to watch this dumpster fire of a propaganda film. So I thought, lets see if I can't find and review this thing. Sure enough, It was available on YouTube and here I am writing about it. I remembered that this propaganda cartoon was really, really stupid but I was not prepared for how bad it (and its message) actually is. Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue not only fails to provide any useful information about drugs (not surprisingly), it actually makes the idea of using drugs more attractive to its audience while also being creepy and promoting violence against anyone who makes a point that you cannot counter.

The film starts with a young boy stealing his little sister's piggy bank to buy marijuana. The various of representations of 1980's cartoon characters that are in her room come to life and begin to investigate (this is super disturbing for reasons that I will cover later). This group, which includes Alvin and The Chipmunks, the Smurfs, Garfield, and ALF, discovers the boy's stash of drugs (according to this cartoon, drugs look like a tiny sleeping bag and some cat turds, by the way) and decide to enlist the help of other cartoon characters to help get him off drugs. For some reason, the boy is also followed around by an animate cloud of weed smoke. The boy and the smoke monster are abducted by Bugs Bunny in his time machine (I don't remember that being a thing in the original cartoons but whatever). He is taken to see the first time he smoked marijuana and Bugs Bunny begins to shame and berate the him. The smoke monster tries to defend the boy and makes some decent points but is assaulted by Bugs (if you can't win an argument, just hit somebody is the message that I got from this). Late,r the kid tries to run from the smoke monster and is "saved" by a Ninja Turtle who pulls him down into a pool of human shit (I'll take my chances with the smoke, thank you). The Ninja turtle pulls a drain plug which sucks the boy down in to a trippy representation of his mind where some of The Muppet Babies take him on a roller coaster ride. Miss Piggy has a bad trip and freaks out (I thought it was the boy who was on drugs but, at this point in the cartoon, I lack the strength to question this). The young drug user is transported to a nightmarish hell-scape where the cartoon characters (who I thought were trying to "help" him) torment him with saw blades and various other tortures while judging him for his lifestyle. Daffy Duck shows him a vision of his future where drugs turned him into a zombie, or something. Meanwhile, the smoke monster tries to get the little sister to smoke weed. The boy comes back to reality, assaults the smoke monster (this is like the fourth time someone attacked this thing), and swears off drugs forever. The film ends with a terrible song and dance number and this awful experience mercifully comes to a close.

I want to talk about the premise of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue first. The idea was that this propaganda film would scare children away from trying drugs. They attempt to accomplish this by having everyone's favorite cartoon characters come to life when someone uses drugs. You can see how this is flawed. As a toddler, I know I would love to hang out with Garfield and the Ninja Turtles and I saw that this could be accomplished with a little drug use. "Sign me up" is probably what I thought when I saw this back in the early 1990's. This anti drug film somehow manages to make drug use look cooler to its target audience which is hilarious, if you ask me.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue is super trippy and this really works against its message. The whole thing has the rhythm of an intense psychedelic experience. The way events seem be only tangentially related but also flow together naturally is very trip like. The events themselves are psychedelic(ish) too. At one point, the boy travels through his own mind (like one does with psychedelic drugs, in a sense). While there, he sees strange visions and is given knowledge by his spirit guides (The Muppet Babies). All this would be great in a pro-psychedelic context but is is incredibly strange to see it in an anti-drug propaganda film.

The way the cartoons come to life is super weird and creepy. We are not presented with world where these characters are beings that always exist. Instead, we see representations of cartoons come to life. This gives one the impression that these characters are vengeful spirits who can inhabit their avatars and torment humans who offend their ancient code of honor. Maybe it's just me but these demon creatures seem to be a bigger problem than drugs. I mean, if they can just run around and toy with the lives of anyone who gets on their bad side, that is a problem, right? Can we get the Army or something to come deal with this issue? They also see the bank being stolen from the little girl's room which means they are contently watching her. That's right, thanks to this film, I now have to deal with the revelation that Papa Smurf is some kind of sick "diddler" who likes to watch little girls change their cloths. Man, this film is trying really hard to ruin the magic of my childhood.

The most troubling thing about this cartoon is the normalization of violence as a method to deal with criticism. The smoke monster actually makes a few good points but they are never addressed. Instead, he is psychically attacked. This shows the true colors of the prohibitionist mind set. That is to say, they have no interest in making or defending their case. They throw a bunch of lies at you and if you don't accept them blindly you will be forced to accept them with the threat violence. In the scene where Bugs Bunny is calling the boy an idiot for smoking marijuana, the smoke monster says to "relax" and "it isn't a big deal" (a true statement) and is assaulted for this. To me, promoting violence as a means to solve political and social disagreements seems far worse than drug use.

I have been writing about a lot of heavy subjects lately so I wanted to do something kind of fun and relatively short this time. I do, however, think it is helpful to look at old anti-drug propaganda like this because it gives us an idea of what was being said about drug use in the past and it highlights how weak the prohibitionist position really is. If you have a little time to kill and you would like to laugh at a bad propaganda piece, check this one out. Just make sure to get good and high first or you may want to pull your hair out from frustration before it's over.

Peace.

This was another installment in a continuing series of posts that are designed to highlight some of the dumber things to come out of the drug war. If you liked this post, please feel free to check out my page for more similar content on drugs, the drug war, and movies.

The images in this post are taken from the film's promotional material or are screen captures of the film and are used in accordance with Fair Use laws.