Rugrats in Paris

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem flagrantly irresponsible to market a cartoon to kids in which a diaper brigade of babies have wonderful adventures when they wander away from their parents and get lost? This sequel to 1998's equally reprehensible The Rugrats Movie finds the drunkenly-drawn, word-slurring tykes from Nickelodeon's TV show running around a Japanese monster theme park in France while one brat's daddy fixes a robot dinosaur that's on the fritz. Meanwhile Chuckie, the whiniest toddler, and his widowed father mope around in tandem wishing they could find a new mommy/wife. They get more than they bargained for when the park's Cruella DeVil-style manager decides she needs a husband to push around. Aside from their cutsey-poo kiddie malapropisms ("over my dead potty!"), the Rugrats are almost uniformly unlikable, obnoxious or just plain mean. For the life of me I just can't figure out why anybody likes this cartoon. Not recommended. (R. Blackwelder)