"Bebe's Kids" is the second PG-13-rated animated feature to hit the big screen in the past three weeks, but it's certainly tame compared to "Cool World."
Based on a monologue routine by the late stand-up comic Robin Harris (who is seen doing pieces of it in the opening credits), "Bebe's Kids" wants to be an inner-city take on Disneyized animation, among other things.
Instead, however, it waters down Harris' insightful, raucous routines, using stylized animation that wears out its welcome about halfway through. Toward the end, there's also a serious comment on the troubles of black families struggling to survive in crime-infested urban neighborhoods, but it feels forced in this setting.
The film stars an animated Robin Harris (voiced by Faizon Love), who sets his sights on a beauty he meets at a funeral. He asks for a date, which she turns into a Saturday at the amusement park Fun World, with her young, well-behaved son.
But when Robin drops by to pick them up, he finds she is baby-sitting her friend Bebe's three rowdy brats, who cause no end of trouble from the moment he meets them.
Most of the film takes place in the amusement park, a searing spoof of Disneyland, with its white-bread approach to rides and concessions, complete with white security guards who act more like CIA agents.
Some of this is inventive, but some feels more like invectiveness. The screenplay, by Reginald Hudlin ("Boomerang," "House Party"), takes wild aim at too many targets, so it's no surprise that he hits so few.
There's a bright "Westworld"-style centerpiece in which robots in a shut-down exhibit go berserk and put the kids on trial for their rowdiness, with Abraham Lincoln defending them and Richard Nixon prosecuting. The musical tunnel of love sequence is also a stylish and amusing diversion.
Best of all are some of the one-liners, as when Robin starts to go into a profane tirade, then sidesteps with asides aimed at the title characters. "Test-tube baby," he mutters at one point.
But too often the film substitutes inane rap songs for wit and veers into vulgar elements that seem inappropriate in a kids' picture — even one aimed at inner-city youth. There's a running gag that has flies hovering over the youngest kid's diaper, a rather cruel touch that has Robin's nasty ex-wife pursuing him, a funeral where everyone is glad the guy died and the framing device has Robin in a saloon relating the story to a blind bartender.
Some of this is fitfully funny but would be more welcome in an R-rated Ralph Bakshi effort.
"Bebe's Kids" is rated PG-13 for cartoon violence, as well as doses of profanity and vulgarity.
— "ITSY BITSY SPIDER" is a short cartoon that precedes "Bebe's Kids," a hip cross between bug-killer TV ads and "The Terminator," as a Schwarzenegger-style exterminator goes after the title character in a piano teacher's home.
The attempts to eradicate the arachnid escalate to nuclear warfare in the ultimate cartoon spoof of the ridiculous levels of violence we see around us — both in entertainment and the real world.
It's also funnier and artfully says more in five minutes than "Bebe's Kids" manages in 74. The short, by the way, is rated PG.