Yogi Bear (2010) Film Review

1 hr. 22 mins.

Starring: Dan Aykroyd (voice), Justin Timerlake (voice), Tom Cavanagh, Anna Farris, T.J.Miller,

Directed by: Eric Brevig

MPAA Rating: PG

Rating: * star (out of 4 stars)

Babyboomers may feel somewhat nostalgic about revisiting the days of yesteryear when everybody's favorite "smarter than the average bear" Yogi Bear was a cartoon darling in the festive days of the enjoyable Hanna-Barbera fun factory when watching Saturday morning programming meant the time for escapist innocence and wayward impishness. However, director Eric Brevig's ("Journey to the Center of the Earth") thinly-veiled 3-D animated dud in Warner Bros.' faceless live action feature Yogi Bear fails to offer today's crumb-crushing crowd the same mindless mockery that made giddy youngsters' imaginations soar with aimless frivolity from yesteryear.

Sure, indiscriminating tykes will probably get an instinctive kick out of the oafish Yogi Bear (and sidekick Boo Boo) and deem this latest cultural cartoon icon a momentarily "flavor of the moment" until another ill-conceived kiddie concoction arrives on the scene and with better special effects and sight gags to boot. Still, this does not excuse this woefully flimsy family fare from being a needlessly unfunny, dour and pointless puff piece for the juvenile set. Yogi Bear is about as appetizing as a picnic basket full of ravenous red ants.

In this day and age when most of the featured kiddie comedies are sophisticated and show some semblance of ingenuity and creative thrust geared toward savvy youth home-schooled on resilient and responsive kid-approved capers in the millennium, the labored and numbing Yogi Bear is a thankless throwback to underwhelming animated ditties that think they are more cutesy and clever than originally conceived. Basically, poor Yogi and Boo Boo are tapped for the latest litmus test in an effort to garner stimulated marketing interest in a classic cartoon being dusted off for a renewed fun-and-flaky film franchise. One may get a better sensation from a random mugging in Jellystone National Park as opposed to enduring this loopy and laughless entry.

Naturally, the empty-headed exploits persist as bear buddies Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd) and pint-sized Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake) are in the middle of a cockeyed dilemma involving an evil-minded politician looking to close down the profit-deprived Jellystone National Park for his own advantageous gain. In the meanwhile, the bears' human pal Ranger Smith (droopy-eyed Tom Cavenagh) is embroiled in a love affair with a nature-loving documentary filmmaker named Rachel (Anna Farris, "The House Bunny") whose expertise and love for critters of all kind comes in handy when promoting her passionate cause for embracing Yogi's and Boo Boo's beloved ecosystem at the aforementioned Jellystone National Park.

Predictably, the movie is saturated with all kinds of pseudo comedic static cling-stale bits of awful puns, quips and forced repartee, belabored sight gags (particularly a water-skiing Yogi Bear and several incarnations of wayward picnic baskets) and the overall grade school-level humor that is about as inventive as a ticklish hairball caught in little Boo Boo's throat. Of course the main consensus is whether not Yogi Bear and his posse can prevent the nefarious politico from eradicating the good times at Jellystone National Park. Unfortunately the displayed samples of silly-minded slapstick and stilted dialogue make this vacuous vehicle as welcoming as an unrehearsed third grade spelling bee contest.

Brevig's cartoonish creation in Yogi Bear is profoundly uninspired. Screenwriter Brad Copeland's scattershot script is as gainfully wooden and stiff as one of the park benches located in Jellystone. The klutzy kinetic energy in the movie is distractingly dim-witted and over-the-top even for an innocuously goofy child-friendly farce. The voiceover work from both Aykroyd and Timberlake is questionably nonchalant to the point that you feel the performers are merely going through the motions to add some zany albeit straining flavor to the big screen boisterous bears. Both Cavanagh and Farris click as convincingly as a rusty stopwatch in this insipid romp.

It is too bad that we cannot enlist another treasured Hanna-Barbera cartoon cad...perhaps the gun-toting Quick Draw McGraw...to shoot up this yammering Yogi-induced yuckfest as required target practice.