The Little Polar Bear 2

Imagine little American kids playing in the snow. Change them into animals. Add sugar. Add more sugar. Be sick. Feel better. Go and see Chicken Little. Laugh.

Imagine German animators who made a feature length film, called The Little Polar Bear, that was shown all over the world. They learnt what "cute" meant. It meant money.

And so a sequel was created. Please, said the distributors, stay cute. Don't, said the investors, get smart. They didn't.

The little American kids are little polar bears and their friends (seals, lemmings, etc) have a great time in the global warming Arctic. Their only fear is Man. The mummy and daddy bears warn them: keep away from snowcats, snowmobiles, standing-up creatures with machines and the whole progress/civilisation thing that makes absolutely no sense.

The little bears, like little kids, make mistakes and one thing leads, as one thing always does, and they end up on the Gal... those islands where Mr Darwin discovered the origins of something-or-other and weird, interesting creatures live.

It's warm down there, but the bears don't mind. They are having such fun with the giant iguanas and monkeys and terribly old, terribly big turtle. Even their friend Caruso, who is an Italian penguin, finds a mate.

Is this heaven? No. It's sheer hell.

Ordinary hell can be interesting in a perverse, scary kind of way. Sheer hell is so boring your eyes glaze over and you can't see for a week. Actually, what you see are beautifully drawn beaches and snowscapes. What destroys your will to live is the story and the characters. You ache for Angry Kid. You plead for Garfield. You take back anything bad you ever said about Rugrats.

You try to survive.