::Warming up for a rousing rendition of “Blame Canada”::
The Care Bears Movie was produced in Canada. So there.
For what it’s worth (probably not much), Matilda was consistently advertised as light-hearted, hilarious fun in the tradition of children outsmarting and one-upping their elders. The actual movie, while there were certainly funny elements, also contained quite a bit of abysmal parenting, child neglect, verbal and emotional abuse… it was very bleak in may ways.
Kids notice that sort of thing. Kids who have never known their parents to willfully hurt them, and to whom the idea that parents can be mean to children is foreign, can find that sort of thing really frightening. Stuff like that would literally make my much-younger cousins sick to their stomachs. So yeah, while American movies for kids maybe quite treacly, I’d rather endure that than freak out youngsters who only know loving adults. They’ve got plenty of time to figure out that they’re lucky.
