Yogi Bear

Anna Faris is a lovely and talented woman. She has a cute and expressive face, a nice smile, and strong comic timing. Sure, I have admired her in other films, but in Yogi Bear, which gave me absolutely nothing else to think about, I sat and watched her performance closely, and was impressed by her energy. Sure, the hollow and lame brained script gives her nothing to do, but she at least tackles the awful material with grace and such enthusiasm, I couldn't help but smile from time to time.

I was grateful for those rare smiles, because otherwise, this is a dimwitted and flat-out boring live action and animated comedy for kids. Will kids at least enjoy it? I honestly do not know. The ad campaign, and even the title of the film itself, would like you to believe that this is a modern revival of the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon character who was famous for stealing picnic baskets (or "pic-a-nic baskets", as he calls them) and for being smarter than the average bear. And yes, Yogi (voiced here by Dan Aykroyd) and faithful sidekick Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake, who is quite an impressive dead-ringer for the original voice) do appear for antics that seem to be taken from the cartoons. (I never watched much Yogi Bear as a kid, so I can't be certain.) But, I noticed something odd as the film went on. The movie itself is not really about them. They play no real role in the plot itself. Odd that Yogi gets his name in the title, but spends all of his screen time either as a supporting comic relief character, or reacting to the plot that is going on around him.

Instead of a movie built around the bears, the plot decides to instead focus on Ranger Smith, who always served as kind of a straight man to Yogi's antics in the cartoons, and is played here by Tom Cavanagh. I find this an extreme miscalculation on the part of the filmmakers. Do they seriously believe that kids would be more interested in the boring and stuffy old park ranger, rather than the CG bears who talk, sing, dance, and fly on home-made airplanes? Apparently, they do, as he seems to get more substantial screen time. They try to liven the character of Smith up by giving him a smart, but quirky, love interest by way of a nature documentary filmmaker named Rachel (Anna Faris), and a goofy sidekick named Ranger Jones (T.J. Miller). But it doesn't hide the fact that the Ranger should not be the focus of the movie.

The plot (such as it is) centers on Smith's attempts to save Jellystone Park from being closed down as it nears its 100th anniversary. The crooked Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly) wants to shut the park so he can sell it to greedy loggers who want to cut all the trees down. Smith and Rachel try to prevent this by throwing an elaborate celebration to raise money, which Yogi and Boo Boo inadvertently ruin with their pranks and antics. That's pretty much the entire 80 minutes or so of the movie right there. Ranger Smith keeps on trying to save the park, then the bears show up and do something wrong. We then get a revelation during the last 15 minutes that Boo Boo's pet turtle is actually an endangered species, and could save Jellystone, so everyone goes racing to find it, and foil the Mayor's plans to cut the park down. What's stunning is that it took three different writers to work on such a simple and basic plot.

Like I said before, I can't claim to be an expert on Yogi Bear, but the cartoons did run on TV for numerous decades in various forms, so they had to have been more entertaining than this movie, which is a total bore. Yogi and Boo Boo (despite being enthusiastically voiced by Aykroyd and Timberlake) are dull, and devoid of personality. They may be pranksters, but their antics are bland and repetitive. The human cast members don't hold up much better, and are usually victims to lame running gags, such as the Mayor not being able to work his car window, or Ranger Jones constantly screwing up simple tasks, such as setting up fliers for the park. As I mentioned in the opening, only Anna Faris gets to display any charisma or charm, and that comes from her performance, not from anything in the script.

The studio obviously hopes that Yogi Bear will become a franchise like the Alvin and the Chipmunk films, but if this movie is any indication, there's not enough material for even one Yogi movie. This is a dumb and witless film that might entertain the very youngest of kids, but that's probably it. If your kid is old enough to read by themselves, they're probably too old for this movie.

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