'Yogi Bear': The Reviews Are In!

Is the 3-D cartoon just for kids and woodland creatures? The critics have differing opinions.
By Eric Ditzian

Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake) in "Yogi Bear"

In 2010, we have seen standout animated fare like "Toy Story 3" and "How to Train Your Dragon" dominate the box office. Now the year greets its final CGI-assisted children's tale in "Yogi Bear."

The adaptation of Hanna-Barbera's classic cartoon about picnic-basket-obsessed talking bears won't come close to the opening grosses of those earlier Pixar and DreamWorks films. Nor has "Yogi Bear" garnered its predecessors' rave reviews. Yet Warner Bros.' "Yogi," coming weeks after "Tangled" and at the same time as the rather intense PG-rated "Tron Legacy," could end up faring better than its rather tepid B.O. tracking predicts.

Is "Yogi Bear" the right pick for you this weekend? Find out what the critics are saying and then plan accordingly.

The Story
"The film's plot has Yogi (Dan Aykroyd) and Boo Boo (Justin Timberlake) helping Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh) defend Jellystone from a rapacious mayor (the funny Andrew Daly), who wants to sell off the park's logging rights to bail out the city budget. The ranger doesn't want to hear about Yogi's schemes, of course. He just wants Yogi to act like a bear — rather than water-ski, steal vending machines and build a contrabulous fabtraption of a flying machine for high-tech picnic-grabbing. (The Baskit Nabber 2000, as it's called, has no seat belts, and its safety information card is just a hand-drawn picture of passengers screaming.)" — Dan Kois, The Washington Post

The Comparison to the Cartoon
"Those of us who grew up on Yogi Bear cartoons can breathe easy: In his new movie — featuring a 3-D computer-animated Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd) and Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake) alongside live action actors — our beloved pic-a-nic thief isn't asked to whore himself by rapping, farting, or dropping pop culture references the way some of his animated brethren have in recent years. ... There's nothing particularly inventive in the plot or grade-school humor, but the movie skates by on the timeless, undemanding charm of watching a tie-wearing bear try to steal people's lunches." — Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly

The Dissenters
"Neither smarter nor dumber than the average family-friendly comedy, 'Yogi Bear' is a bland and innocuous small-fry outing that retains a measure of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon's charm, though scarcely enough to justify the time, expense and visual-effects trickery it must have taken to inflate an endearing 2D cartoon into a dopey 3D extravaganza. Still, as Fox's 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' pics made abundantly clear, there's a sizable audience for incongruous pairings of live-action humans and patently computer-generated critters, suggesting a steady stream of guests at Warners' picnic table through the holidays, and heavy minivan DVD-player rotation." — Justin Chang, Variety

The Dissenters, Part II
"The director, Eric Brevig ('Journey to the Center of the Earth'), probably did everything he could with the simple-minded screenplay, the dumb jokes, and the general tedium. Studio heads probably instructed him to overdo the 3D gimmicks, too. Who knows, maybe they even told him to prevent Anna Faris from being funny, which I wouldn't have thought was possible. In a way, though, the film is faithful to the old cartoons, in that it's grating and tiresome and not suitable for anyone over the age of 4. The animation is better, though." — Eric D. Snider, Cinematical

The Bottom Line
"This is a cute movie, a kid's movie, and a rather good one. The computer-generated bears are adorable — it's come to this: Computer creations can be adorable — and the movie packs a lot of amusing incidents into a nice, trim 79-minute package. ... For single adults, there's no reason to see it, unless you're a Yogi Bear completist. But adults with children, who are used to getting bored out of their skulls with children's fare, may find in this a refreshing and politically charged change of pace." — Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Check out everything we've got on "Yogi Bear."

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