Stickin' together we can make it!
Nothing can stop us, we can't go wrong!
We can be tough, yes, we can take it!
We care a lot and we will be strong
Nothing can stop us, we can't go wrong!
We can be tough, yes, we can take it!
We care a lot and we will be strong
Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation is the second theatrical film in the Care Bears franchise.
This film has a different continuity than the first movie and the specials. The Care Bears and Care Bears Cousins grew up together, but were pursued as children by a malevolent entity known as Dark Heart. He later finds a young, ambitious, and very bitter girl named Christy, and he promises to fulfill her wishes in return for help if he should ever ask. He then gets frustrated in pursuit of the Care Bears, but then uses Christy to have her pretend to need help from the Care Bears so that he can capture them. Eventually, John and Dawn, Christy's two best friends who have been helping the Care Bears, talk Christy into joining them to stop Dark Heart, even if it costs them their lives.note
Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: In this case, completely absent. One would expect there to be counselors somewhere at the camp. Instead, a Jerk Jock character seems to call the shots, ordering Christy and the twins to pick up litter. Also nobody seems to be stopping the campers from vandalizing the camp once Dark Heart's influence takes effect.
- Age Cut: Several of these occur during the "Growing Up" song.
- Age-Progression Song: The "Growing Up" song, which is sung appropriately during the scenes where the bears and cousins grow up.
- Audience Participation: See Clap Your Hands If You Believe below for details.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: True and Noble Heart are the senior Care Bear and Cousin and implied to be the strongest—and possibly as powerful as all the other Bears and Cousins combined. Dark Heart is willing to face the entire Family minus True and Noble at Care-A-Lot but retreats once they show up, and True and Noble are confident they can beat him alone when they hunt for him afterward and confront him at the climax. Their strength is also shown by the color of their beams: while the Care Bear Stares of the other bears are rainbow-colored, True and Noble's Stares are pure white light.
- Award-Bait Song: The ending song "Forever Young".
- Big Good: The Great Wishing Star. Whatever his motivations for finding Trueheart and Noble Heart, we'll never know.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the end of the movie, True Heart makes an impassioned plea to the audience watching the movie to show and tell the world how much they care in order to save Christy after Dark Heart accidentally zaps her. Also, as the movie’s narrator, the Great Wishing Star talks directly to the audience and thanks them for caring about others at the end of the movie.
- Chekhov's Skill: Christy's marble shooting. It is somewhat shoehorned in at the beginning as being the only thing she is good at; then, at the critical moment during the climax, she shoots a marble that somehow dislodges the chain holding up the imprisoned Care Bears which then falls and releases them.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Bears and Cousins exhort the audience to chant "We care!" along with them to save Christy, who made a Heroic Sacrifice. Even the repentant villain Dark Heart breaks down and joins in, and not only does he save her, he winds up becoming a nice human boy. Reviewer Hal Lipper referred to this as the "Tinker Bell Principle" in his review of the movie.
- Continuity Snarl: Exactly how this movie — and it's an Origin Story — fits in with the first Care Bears Movie is a prime source of tongue-in-cheek
Fan Wank. Most likely the first movie is in the same continuity as the two 1980s specials and the DiC show, and the second movie and the Nelvana series comprise an Alternate Continuity. - Collapsing Lair: Dark Heart's lair after he becomes human. If the Power of Friendship is what fuels the Care Bear's powers, then apparently his lair is held together with the Power Of Evil.
- Corrupt the Cutie: As with the book spirit in the first movie, this is Dark Heart's schtick: starting with Christy, he begins turning the kids at the summer camp evil.
- Crystal Prison: Where Dark Heart traps the Bears and Cousins.
- Curtains Match the Window: Dark Heart before his Heel–Face Turn.
- Custom Uniform: The students at the camp seem to wear the same type of uniform but with varying bottoms; Dawn's shorts are pink, John's are navy blue, Christy's are purple, and so forth.
- A Day in the Limelight: True and Noble Heart are major characters here despite not appearing in any of the movies before or after this, and only get a handful of appearances in the TV series.
- Deal with the Devil: Christy strikes a deal with Dark Heart; she becomes "camp champ" in exchange for a future unnamed favor.
- Disney Death: Christy, who gets hit in the crossfire when Dark Heart shoots back at the Care Bears and gets brought back to life by Dark Heart's own caring.
- The Dragon: Christy, due to her deal.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Dark Heart is flabbergasted that Christy would save his life, noting that it would have been smarter for her to let him drown.
- Evil Redhead: Dark Heart, in his human form (or any form that has fur/hair).
- Fighting a Shadow: True and Noble Heart go to fight Dark Heart and appear to find him in a dark land. After obliterating him, they discover it was only his shadow that they destroyed.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Dark Heart is mostly seen in his human boy form other than his red cloud form. It is the form he ends up taking on once he reforms at the end of the movie.
- Good Hurts Evil: Dark Heart flinches away from the rainbow beam the Great Wishing Star uses to summon the Care Bears. In general, kindness and good emotions seem to make him physically uncomfortable, and he groans in pain when hit by Care Bear Stares.
- Good Is Not Soft: After driving off Dark Heart from Care-A-Lot, True and Noble Heart decide to hunt him down and kill him (though not in those words) and actually succeed in destroying his shadow. It's only due to Christy that they consider trying to redeem him at all instead of fighting him.
- Half-Identical Twins: Dawn and John are completely indistinguishable apart from Dawn's pigtails.
- Hate Plague: Rogue campers run around uprooting trees and snickering evilly after Dark Heart begins to kidnap the bears. Whether he is influencing the camp directly by being there or if the camp is only one of many places suffering from the loss of the Care Bears is unknown.
- Heel–Face Turn: Dark Heart, after he realizes his feelings for Christy to save her.
- "I Am" Song: "Flying My Colors" is one for several Care Bears and Cousins.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The Great Wishing Star observes that Noble Heart and True Heart have such a powerful ability to love and care, it's effectively given them this.
- Kids Are Cruel: The "camp champ" treats Dawn, John, and Christy like dirt for not being good at sports, verbally abusing them and making them do all the chores.
- Little Stowaway: Baby Swift Heart stows away in True Heart's backpack while True Heart is going on a mission to Earth.
- Love Redeems: Or caring redeems, anyway. Dark Heart becomes Christy's friend (after she saves his life), and he feels so bad about nearly killing her that it drives the evil out of him.
- A Minor Kidroduction: The first half hour of the movie begins with the Care Bears and the Care Bear Cousins as cubs. They become their current age during the second half of the movie in a number aptly named "Growing Up".
- Mortality Ensues: Despite his true form being a Made of Evil cloud of red smoke, Dark Heart is knocked unconscious falling out of a boat when in his human form and almost drowns, with him incredulously wondering why Christy didn't let him die.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Dark Heart after seeing that he accidentally zapped Christy. He even outright asks, "What have I done?"
- Nerves of Steel: True and Noble Heart are unfazed while getting shot at by Dark Heart's lightning.
- No Cure for Evil: Dark Heart has a lot of powers, but healing isn't one of them. Because of this, he has to turn to the Care Bears for help when Christy gets injured by his magic.
- No Name Given:
- It's never explained just who - or what - the Great Wishing Star is. Little Star Buddy and Little Heart Buddy apparently work for him, and he seems to be narrating the film, but beyond that? Not so much as a hint.
- We also never learn what Dark Heart calls himself after becoming a real boy.
- Not Allowed to Grow Old: When the bears and cousins grow up during the "Growing Up" montage, True Heart and Noble Heart retain their normal appearances with no signs of aging. Dawn, John, and Christy also remain kids during that time.
- One-Winged Angel: Dark Heart turns into a big ol' heap of Super Smoke.
- Platonic Life-Partners: It's not explained how or when True and Noble Heart met each other, but the two are nigh-inseparable (even apparently sharing a bedroom) and comfortable in their roles as matriarch and patriarch respectively of the entire Family.
- Pilot Movie: The artstyle changes ever so slightly between this movie and the first, introducing the designs that would be used in the upcoming TV series.
- Protectorate: Christy treats the twins as this. She even notes that, since she's become the camp champ, no one pushes them around anymore because "I won't let 'em!" Later, we see her move to physically shield them when she thinks Dark Heart is about to drop something on top of the three of them.
- Redemption Demotion: Dark Heart loses all his powers and becomes a normal human when he turns good.
- Less extreme, but Christy also chooses to stand between Dark Heart and Noble Heart and True Heart in the climax of the film, even when it causes him to take back all her new abilities.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Dark Heart in human form. Them turning blue is the first sign that he's turned into a real human.
- Sealed Good in a Can: The Care Bears and Cousins are trapped in the crystals of a chandelier until Christy frees them.
- Ship Tease:
- Human!Dark Heart and Christy seem to have this at the end, what with all the hand-holding and such.
- True Heart and Noble Heart have a parental role to the cubs, and they seem to share a room, if not a bed. Overlaps with Interspecies Romance, if this is indeed the case, since True Heart is a bear and Noble Heart is a horse.
- Shout-Out:
- Dark Heart's rescuing of Christy from her Disney Death is reminiscent to the book and stage versions of Peter Pan, where the eponymous character uses a similar method to save Tinkerbell.
- In fact, the whole interaction with Christy and Dark Heart is extremely similar to Faust. This and the above example did not go unnoticed by critics or The Nostalgia Critic.
- Slippery Swimsuit: During the end with everyone having fun in a lake, Grumpy's swimsuit winds up falling off after he makes a splash.
- Super-Empowering: The Great Wishing Star gives True and Noble Heart their tummy symbols and the powers that come with them.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment:
- The opening is rather frightening once one gets old enough to understand the significance of it. Dark Heart is pursuing a ship full of orphaned babies with the intention of destroying it and drowning them and the implication that he's the one who orphaned them in the first place. Thank goodness for the Great Wishing Star saving them all.
- Much of the movie is adorable kids' fare, until the part where Dark Heart (in human form) nearly drowns and Christy saves him. After catching his breath he tells her (in kid-friendly terms) that she would've let him drown if she knew what was good for her, and she bitterly remarks that the only difference between them might be that she wouldn't. That's a pretty dark moment, and one likely to fly over the target audience's heads.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When he's fully explaining to Christy about his plan to confront True Heart and Noble Heart, Dark Heart stands up and boasts that then there'll be nobody left to stop him... problem is, he does his grandstanding in the middle of a boat on the camp's lake, and this action proceeds to upset the boat badly enough that Dark Heart stumbles and falls out, hitting his head on the boat's side, and he would have drowned right there if Christy hadn't jumped in to save him.
- What's more, Dark Heart does this while he's a human boy. Now normally, this wouldn't happen to a smoke of darkness. But a human? He's not so lucky.
- Time-Passes Montage: The Care Bears and Cousins grow from cubs into their adult forms in one of these.
- Transforming Conforming: Dark Heart frequently takes the form of a human boy. This appears to grant him all the weaknesses that come with being human, like falling unconscious and nearly drowning when he stumbles and hits his head on an oar while boating on the camp lake.
- Two Girls and a Guy: Christy, Dawn and John.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Zig-Zagged with Dark Heart; he can turn into monsters and Super Smoke, but spends most of the movie looking like a kid, tends to Poke the Poodle, and ultimately gets redeemed.
- Villainous Friendship: Dark Heart and Christy. And despite being a villainous one, it's still a friendship that ends up redeeming Dark Heart.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Christy averts this by saving Dark Heart from drowning — even after all he's done by the time this happens. It leads to a Heel–Face Turn, and at one point provided the page quote.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The Bears and Cousins have the above-mentioned Time-Passes Montage, which suggests the passage of years, in what appears to be the same month that John, Dawn, and Christy are at their miserable camp. One can only assume that time passes differently in Care-a-lot, but it looks really weird.
