Retro Salad - Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer

What is Retro Salad you ask? This is my opportunity to take a look back at television shows I found awesome as a child and do my best to ignore nostalgia and determine if the show was good or just a poor ploy for toy sales. Anyway, without further ado: the first installment of yet another tacky blog idea!



So this time around I chose to take a look back at Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer. Now, in all honesty, I had watched the movie a few times before today, but the same logic applies.

The Nostalgia:
Now I remembered this movie pretty well, so I thought. Imagine me: A hip six year old kid who was into everything you could possibly find cool in 1998: Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z.... Well you get the idea. When my friend Matt proposed we watch a 'kids movie' that prominently featured a little girl clad in rainbow with a matching horse, I wasn't too enthused, but after getting through the horribly annoying opening song, the movie drew me in. I rented it a few more times on my own as a kid, but the rental place soon went out of business, and Ms. Brite was soon logged away in the depths of my mind under "Things a Young Boy Probably Shouldn't Admit He Likes."

The Reality:
After years of forgetting about the hour and a half gay pride parade of a kids movie, I saw this gem pop up on Netflix. I was a little hesitant to watch it again, but my love for terrible 80's movies lead me to watching it late one night. I have to say, it wasn't too bad. The opening musical number was still atrocious, but after making it through the first five minutes, I started to remember why this movie was so awesome.

For a kids movie, the plot was pretty dark. I mean a selfish princess wants to take a diamond planet for herself even though it will bring the destruction of the universe and cut off light from every planet. Words like "death" and "kill" are thrown around like nothing and there are some gruesome looking monsters that battle our mini heroine. Not only this, but the show itself was dark. Despite Rainbow's sunny color pallatte and the color kid's bright designs, once in space, the movie is splashed with lots of dark blues, purples, and shades of black. I wonder how my mother allowed me to watch this as a child.

Dark things aside, this movie actually had some decent writing to it. Things happened for a reason instead of being just random action like many 80's cartoons suffered from. Plot holes (aside from that jerk of a talking horse) were pretty much absent. As for being made to sell toys, I have to say a cliche "as if". If they really wanted to sell toys the Color Kids would have tagged along for the ride, or at the very least the girls (selling dolls and what have you). Even Stormy and Tickled Pink were left behind. The movie centered around Rainbow and Krys.

The Verdict:
I have to say that this movie actually exceeded how I remembered it. At the time in my life that I originally viewed it, the movie was more of a time-waster while I waited for Sailor Moon to air so I could see if Prince Diamond's latest plan to capture Serena succeeded. Now, the movie has a much deeper meaning to me. Maybe its just one of those gay prerequisites. Who knows? All I know for sure is that this movie rocks. Don't agree? Then you, my friend, can suck it.