He's smarter than the average bear. Taller and more talkative, too. As a kid I loved Yogi Bear, Hanna Barara's cartoon about the picnic basket nabbing bear and his hetero lifemate, Boo-Boo. I followed his attempts to antagonize poor Ranger Smith whenever I had the chance. Yogi was so cool he even captained his own team(the Yogi Yahooeys) in Laff-a-Lympics. The reruns of Laff-a-Lympics were my absolute favorite. Yogi could do no wrong.
So when I first heard that a live-action Yogi Bear flick was in the works my thoughts were a mix of excitement and dread. It wouldn't be hard to translate the 'toons brand of childish humor to the big screen. On the other hand, the needs of a feature film demand that this can't be a simple Yogi plot to snatch away some poor family's lunch. The story had to be expanded; Yogi given traits he's never once revealed. There'd have to be more human characters, villains and foiled schemes; pop culture references shoehorned in. None of these things make up the Yogi Bear I grew up with. Maybe I was blowing it out of proportion. Maybe Yogi Bear would be exactly what I hoped it would be. I've seen two of my childhood favorites remade into films with stunning success already this year, so there had to be hope. Right? Right?
In a word: "No".
Leaving aside the talented voice work of Dan Akroyd and Justin Timberlake and the impressive visuals(which were hampered at our screening by a faulty projector bulb or something), Yogi Bear swings and misses on literally everything else. As I feared, the simple premise is hobbled by an utterly ridiculous plot involving human characters nobody cares about. Yogi and Boo-Boo still live in Jellystone Park, are still thieving pic-a-nic baskets, and still driving poor Ranger Smith(Tom Cavanaugh, stuck in Hollywood hell) batty. Only now the Ranger has an ambitious, conniving deputy(TJ Miller).
Not content to make this a fun filled game of cat 'n mouse between Yogi and the Ranger, a nonsensical plot involving the evil town mayor(Andrew Daly) and his scheme to sell Jellystone to the highest bidder is heaped upon us. That leaves it up to Yogi, Boo-Boo, Ranger Smith, and poor Anna Faris as a documentary filmmaker doing a story on the talking bears to raise enough money to save the park. >sigh< I'm assuming someone at Warner Brothers has some incriminating photos of Ms. Faris locked away in a file drawer somewhere.
You'd think if the presence of two talking bears is well known enough to be featured in a documentary, the park would have no problem hauling in visitors to see them. That might just be me overthinking the logic of Yogi Bear, but if maybe I was distracted by some actual laughs I wouldn't have time to think about such things. What shocked me most was how badly Brad Copeland's script struggles to carve out even a single chuckle, but all we ever get are warmed over sight gags(like the Mayor's limo window that won't roll down. Har har har.). The jokes are neither intelligent enough for adults or silly enough for kids. At the screening I was at, the children attending were noticeably silent. If you can't entertain kids with a talking bear who steals food then what's the point?
It's a shame, too, because Dan Akroyd does solid voicework voicing Yogi. Justin Timberlake continues to convince me that he can do pretty much anything he puts his mind to with a dead on impersonation of Boo-Boo. If only he had something to say worth listening to. Unfortunately Yogi Bear ends up being about as much fun as an ant infested picnic.
