Yogi Bear: A Review
I wanted to see this movie in theatres, but I let bad reviews talk me out of it. Then I saw it at the drug store and decided to pick it up, and now I know: those reviewers are idiots. Either that, or they don't get the kind of goofy comedy that Hannah-Barbera made a staple of their output; everything from The Flintstones to Scooby Doo was all about stupid jokes and over-the-top slapstick. Yogi Bear was always about this pattern; goofy joke, elaborate setup, then Yogi takes a shot in the face. That's basically what the movie was.
It suffers a little bit for the presence of an actual plot (naturally involving an effort to save Jellystone Park from being shut down), but the people involved understood what made the property work in the first place, and the actual plot (enacted by incompetent caricatures), but it doesn't spend much time on it that isn't also about Yogi and Boo Boo getting into another scrape.
On the plus side, I don't think I missed anything by not seeing Yogi Bear in theatres. It was perfectly suited to watching in your PJs on a Saturday morning. Some obscenely sugary cereal may also have been called for.
Tom Cavanagh was as bland as Ranger Smith ever was, and was thus well-suited to his role, though TJ Miller rather stole his thunder as the enthusiastic Ranger Jones. As villains, the mayor and his yes-man were both largely forgettable roles (though both played by comedians I'm familiar with); not hilarious, no, but also nowhere near as painful as Steve Martin was in Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Anna Faris also played a largely forgettable role as Ranger Smith's love interest, but they were cutely awkward together and occasionally funny. No, the movie was all about Dan Ackroyd and Justin Timberlake, about as strange a pairing as one could imagine, but both sporting awesomely accurate voices; I remain entirely shocked that Justin Timberlake could do Boo Boo's voice. Seriously.
The movie is largely Yogi and Boo Boo trying to steal pic-a-nic baskets, and jokes about the same. This is entirely what it should have been, and in an ideal world nobody would have thought that any conflict beyond Ranger Smith and Yogi was necessary, but that's just how movies work. I can't really imagine a better remake of Yogi Bear, unless they'd decided to go with CG that was as cheap and clumsy as the animation from the original show, but that might have actually hurt the presentation, so I don't miss it.
It suffers a little bit for the presence of an actual plot (naturally involving an effort to save Jellystone Park from being shut down), but the people involved understood what made the property work in the first place, and the actual plot (enacted by incompetent caricatures), but it doesn't spend much time on it that isn't also about Yogi and Boo Boo getting into another scrape.
On the plus side, I don't think I missed anything by not seeing Yogi Bear in theatres. It was perfectly suited to watching in your PJs on a Saturday morning. Some obscenely sugary cereal may also have been called for.
Tom Cavanagh was as bland as Ranger Smith ever was, and was thus well-suited to his role, though TJ Miller rather stole his thunder as the enthusiastic Ranger Jones. As villains, the mayor and his yes-man were both largely forgettable roles (though both played by comedians I'm familiar with); not hilarious, no, but also nowhere near as painful as Steve Martin was in Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Anna Faris also played a largely forgettable role as Ranger Smith's love interest, but they were cutely awkward together and occasionally funny. No, the movie was all about Dan Ackroyd and Justin Timberlake, about as strange a pairing as one could imagine, but both sporting awesomely accurate voices; I remain entirely shocked that Justin Timberlake could do Boo Boo's voice. Seriously.
The movie is largely Yogi and Boo Boo trying to steal pic-a-nic baskets, and jokes about the same. This is entirely what it should have been, and in an ideal world nobody would have thought that any conflict beyond Ranger Smith and Yogi was necessary, but that's just how movies work. I can't really imagine a better remake of Yogi Bear, unless they'd decided to go with CG that was as cheap and clumsy as the animation from the original show, but that might have actually hurt the presentation, so I don't miss it.