Yogi Bear

admin | February 9, 2011 | Comments (0)

DIR: Eric Brevig • WRI: Jeffrey Ventimilia, Joshua Sternin, Brad Copeland• PRO: Donald De Line, Karen Rosenfelt • DOP: Peter James • ED: Kent Beyda • DES: David Sandefur • CAST: Dan Aykroyd, Justin Timberlake, Anna Faris

The sun has barely settled on 2010 and already audiences have been thrown into the deep end with tasters of what kind of film our big screens are to be graced with this year. From this end of the year it would seem that it is shaping up to be the year of recycling childhood loves and hurtling them onto the big screen for all to enjoy. Enter Yogi Bear. That’s right kids, hold on to your pic-a-nic baskets because everyone’s favourite partially-dressed bear (sorry Paddington!) is making a comeback.

Dan Aykroyd adopts the attitude of the ever-hungry bear with ease and he is effortlessly believable in this role. This is more than can be said for Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo, which seems like an odd choice as Timberlake adopts a childish tone for this role which leaves many raised eyebrows in the theatre.

As much as I wanted to fall in love with this movie, there was something missing. The characters were flat and ironically very two-dimensional; Yogi is no longer the active protagonist we remember. There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason for any of the situations to take place other than to make two animated bears engage in a bit of feigned physical comedy. Generally, a hybrid of animation and live-action can create moments of hilarity and a situation of wonderment for the little ones, but this amalgamation is so awkwardly composed that from one scene to the next we are merely waiting for our live-action heroes to realise that this is not normal.

Naturally, children will find this animated caper a riot for its pure ridiculousness but it would seem that filmic laziness has persevered here as Yogi’s creators have relied so heavily on the film’s only audience being very young children, that they have neglected those who bring them. On this front, they could have taken a leaf out of Tangled’s storybook as it has been a hit with children and adults alike. It seems a little careless to neglect adults in the scripting of Yogi’s comeback, when it’s the adults who would have grown up with his short cartoons.

There is very little to grab hold of story-wise here and everything feels a little too rushed, we never truly get to know our characters whether live-action or animated despite having spent a normal amount of time in a cinema seat. It baffles me slightly what creators were thinking in bringing back a beloved character so haphazardly, surely young children are too young to be given movies which require a flick of the mental off-switch? Either way, it would seem that this year doesn’t bode well for returns, watch out Smurfs!

Here, Yogi is no longer smarter than the average bear, but then again neither are the film’s creators it would seem.

Ciara O’Brien

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)
Yogi Bear is released on 11th February 2011

Yogi Bear – Official Website