Movie Review: Yogi Bear

Yogi Bear (2010) 

Directed by Eric Brevig

Written by Brad Copeland, Joshua Sternin, Jeffrey Ventimilia 

Starring Dan Akroyd, Justin Timberlake, Anna Faris, Tom Cavanaugh, T.J Miller

Release Date December 17th, 2010 

Published December 19th, 2010

Straight to the point, Yogi is a talking bear living in Jellystone Park with his pal Boo Boo. Together, they execute radical schemes to steal picnic baskets, or in Yogi's parlance 'pic a nik' baskets, from park patrons. Attempting to stop them is Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanaugh) and his doofusy second in command Ranger Jones (T.J Smith). Along for the ride is a nature documentarian named Rachel (Anna Faris) with whom Ranger Smith has puppy dog crush.

Those are the good guys just having fun with Yogi's shenanigans while keeping the park open. The bad guys are Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly) and his sycophant Chief of Staff (Nate Corddry). They plan to plug the holes they created in the budget with their extravagant spending by closing Jellystone Park and selling the forest to logging interests.

Naturally, the good guys will have to try and stop the bad guys and along the way many more shenanigans will occur, people and bears will fall down and big laughs will be had by all. Give credit to director Eric Brevig, his narrative is clean, concise and to the point. That's better than a lot of other kid’s movies that waste a lot of time just to fill feature length.

So, is “Yogi Bear” funny? Yes, at times all of the goofy effects come together to create moments that you cannot help but laugh at. Also, Tom Cavanaugh is an actor that, for me anyway, has an endless amount of charm even when saddled with a CGI talking bear and T.J Miller. Anna Faris is sweet and cute and can pull off a pretty good flying tackle while pretending to be a snow leopard, I'm not kidding.

There are minor pleasures to be found in “Yogi Bear,” not the least of which is in the special effects which have become so commonplace that even an effect as ridiculous as Yogi and Boo Boo melts into the background and becomes unquestionably part of the action. I'm not saying the effects are great but merely that you can accept them with ease and that's rather something isn't it.

In the end, you could take your kids to something far worse than “Yogi Bear” a goofy but inoffensive little movie with an appealing cast, a few minor laughs and best of all, a throwback cartoon short at the beginning. Right in front of Yogi is a terrific little Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon that puts you in just the right mood for the low watt loopiness of “Yogi Bear.”