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In this mixed live-action, CGI-animated feature based on the old cartoon TV series, Yogi may still contend that he’s smarter than the average bear, but his movie is certainly dumber even than most of today’s dreary computer-generated 3D kidflicks. This is a movie for families who will go to see anything.
In a plot that seems recycled even before it begins, the fast-talking bear (voiced in a reasonable facsimile of Yogi’s cadences by Dan Aykroyd) intervenes when his beloved Jellystone Park is threatened with destruction. The villain is evil Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly), who’s taken his town deeply into debt and intends to use the income from loggers not just to give free money to his constituents but to bankroll a run for governor. Unfortunately, Yogi’s inevitably catastrophic stunts, in which he’s abetted by his loyal but perpetually reluctant sidekick Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake, unrecognizable), wreck the more reasonable survival plans of milquetoast head ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh) and Rachel (Anna Faris), the lady scientist he’s sweet on. Also contributing to the conspicuous lack of hilarity are the mayor’s toady chief of staff (Nate Corddry) and Smith’s deputy Jones (T.J. Miller), a doofus who wants the chief ranger’s job and will collude with the mayor to get it.
The parts of the picture focusing on the shenanigans of Yogi and Boo Boo consist of slapstick action reminiscent of the old show and will probably pass muster with undemanding tykes in the lower single-digit age range. But much of the running-time is devoted to cruelly unfunny stuff involving the human beings. Cavanagh plays Smith as such a morose twit that the character merely irritates, while Faris’ high-energy level exhausts; and the hesitant romance between them is dull. But they’re at least tolerable next to the others. Entirely too much time is given over to antics of the mayor and his henchman, in which Daly and Corddry exhibit technique that falls somewhere below what you’ll encounter in the worst network sitcom. Their scenes together, filled with limp gags involving car windows and idiotic ranting, are literally painful to endure. Miller, meanwhile, works mainly alone, bumbling and stumbling through protracted sequences that make one long for someone like Buster Keaton to show up and slap him silly for daring to emulate him—and doing it so badly.
The animation is of the quality that’s become standard nowadays, which means it’s fine, although the CGI and live-action elements aren’t always perfectly meshed. And the movie is in the obligatory 3D, which is used in the broadest possible fashion, with items flung or in some cases expectorated into the viewers’ faces at random for shock effect. But all the technical pizzazz is in the service of a script so witless and unimaginative that even the most nostalgic baby-boomer will be bored. Like the other recent efforts to resuscitate the Hanna-Barbera cartoons on the big screen (the “Flintstone” and “Scooby Doo” movies), “Yogi Bear” represents just another lame, lazy retooling of an old TV title.
And what of kid viewers, for whom Yogi and Boo Boo may be new commodities? Well, the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” pictures showed that putting old cartoon characters into live-action settings can attract them. But this movie would seem more likely to go the way of “Furry Vengeance,” the Brendan Fraser bomb that also pitted woodland critters against eco-dangerous humans. If you’re looking for a family film for the holidays this season, “Tangled” is the answer—even on a return viewing.