As I've posted before, the Care Power Team update of AiCaL slinks around, showing up
here and
there, without much fanfare and usually inaccessible to most viewers. Well, you can now catch both of the post-Share Bear Shines movies streaming on Netflix, which is a better chance for them to actually be seen than any of the previous outings (though it's still not good for viewers outside the US). I'll be posting about both of these movies fully, but in the meantime, here are few of my overall thoughts.
Similarly to the 2003 SSC DVDs past Get Well Adventure, both of these movies are glorified episodes with framing devices, although the TV Show that the episodes would have been pulled from has yet to, and may never, materialize. To The Rescue has a better framing device than Giving Festival, as it's set at an awards show, with the episodes shown being the award-winning rescue, whereas Giving Festival is just the bears getting ready for the festival and occasionally "remembering" an episode to illustrate a point. Seriously, I kept waiting for one of the bears to say, "Now that's what I call a sticky situation" at the end.
What separates CPT from AiCaL is the titular team itself, which consists of Funshine, Cheer, Share, Grumpy, and Bedtime, though no explanation is given in these movies or in Share Bear Shines for why exactly these five were given powered-up belly badges (save that they're the core five of AiCaL, with Bedtime replacing Oopsy). Considering that non-core bears are nominated for rescue awards in To The Rescue, I had the thought that all the bears could access this extra power, but one episode in Giving Festival makes it explicit that those five are the team and the only ones with the power.
From what I've heard (and I've only heard it from one source, so I'm not entirely sure of how true it is), AGP is rebooting the Care Bears once again, so these two movies and Share Bear Shines are probably all we'll ever see of the Care Power Team incarnation, and the last we'll see of the AiCaL designs. Which is too bad, really. I enjoyed both these movies and Share Bear Shines (and I need them on DVD, please, not just streaming on a website), and I would have liked to see more episodes, especially one that explained where the Care Power came from.