SYNOPSIS:
Everyone’s favorite pic-a-nic basket-stealing bear brings his meal-mooching ways to movies in this live-action/CG-animated adventure starring Dan Aykroyd as the voice of Jellystone Park’s famed troublemaker Yogi Bear and Justin Timberlake as the voice of Yogi’s faithful pal Boo Boo. Jellystone has been losing business, so conniving Mayor Brown has decided to shut it down and sell the land. Faced with the loss of his home, Yogi must prove he really is “smarter than the average bear” as he and Boo Boo join forces with Ranger Smith to find a way to save the park from closing forever.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Hanna
Barbera cartoons played such a huge part during my childhood
that I’ll be forever be indebted to them for inspiring
me to draw whatever cartoon characters that comes to my mind
during my art class. Sigh…that was the good old days.
In turn it raises one question: Who is Hollywood trying to
target with their computer-generated, 3D makeover of "Yogi
Bear"?
For those audiences that needs doses of nostalgic, this movie
incarnation is a yawn fest deprived of any genuine humour
found in those original TV episodes. Well for a start, the
writers tried their very best to recycle every gags and one-liners
but doesn’t mean it’s forgivable to turn the wafer-thin
material into a 70 minutes movie. The human characters are
perhaps flatter than the one-dimensional originals. Let’s
see we have the romance angle in the form of Ranger Smith
(Tom Cavanagh) and Anna Faris as the love interest, Rachel.
And since every movie needs a villain, we have the evil Mayor
Brown (Andrew Daly) who has an alternative of his own. Not
to forget the fumbling Ranger’s assistant, Jones (T.J.
Miller) and of course the stars of the show, Yogi (voiced
by Dan Aykroyd) and Boo-Boo (a commendable Justin Timberlake).
The much younger audience who are not as familiar with Yogi
and Boo-Boo might be slightly amused by Yogi’s constant
pic-a-nic’s antics and his not-so-average plans to rob
more picnic baskets even though they probably doesn’t
even know who Yogi is to begin with. There are dozens of better
CG animations out there who deserved their time. I was about
to say another of Hanna Barbera’s creation turned into
movie, Scooby Doo was a notch better than this but I regress.
To Rhythm and Hues’ credit, Yogi, Boo-Boo and his pet,
a frog-mouthed turtle are graciously CG-fied with nice believable
facial and body hairs, ahem. The Jellystone Park’s backdrops
are supposedly filmed in New Zealand but we honestly can’t
tell if it’s shot in the studio in LA or simply photoshopped.
Since this DVD doesn’t come with the sensory 3D experience,
we can only imagined fireworks shooting at us, popcorns popping
at us among the many other things imagined by director Eric
Brevig (Journey to the center of the Earth) and his crew.
Seriously, it would be better off bringing your kids to a
picnic with a real basket full of food in the park. At least
your kids will thank you for this instead of this mess. As
for the adults, you probably deserved a nap after a long week
at work.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Jellystone
Park Jewels is a short film while Yogi Bear
Mashups compared the original cartoons with the feature
length movie.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Is
there something wrong with the CG or my TV? Details and colours
are a bit off especially when it comes to the live-action
characters blended with CG Yogi and Boo-Boo. Dialogue and
sound effects on the other hand is dynamic and engaging.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Linus Tee
Posted
on 11 April 2011
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