Yogi Bear is a 2010 American live-action film adaptation of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series The Yogi Bear Show directed by Eric Brevig.^[3] The film stars Dan Aykroyd, Justin Timberlake, Tom Cavanagh, Anna Faris, T. J. Miller, Nate Corddry, and Andrew Daly.

It was distributed by Warner Bros. with Hanna-Barbera serving as a co-producer. It is the first film development of a Hanna-Barbera property produced without the assistance of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who died in 2001 and 2006 respectively.

The film tells the story of Yogi Bear as he tries to save his park from being logged. Principal photography began in November 2009. It was preceded by the 3D short Rabid Rider, starring Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.^[4]

Yogi Bear received negative reviews from critics, but has been a box office success.

Plot[link]

Yogi (voiced by Dan Aykroyd) and Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake) are two brown bears who have a penchant for stealing picnic baskets from visitors to Jellystone Park, while park rangers Smith (Tom Cavanagh) and Jones (T. J. Miller) try to prevent them from doing so. Meanwhile, Rachel (Anna Faris), a nature documentary maker, arrives at the park to make a film about Yogi as a rare example of a talking bear. To this end she fits Boo Boo with a bow tie containing a miniature camera, so she can get footage of Yogi in his natural habitat.

Meanwhile Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly) realizes that his city is facing bankruptcy due to profligate spending on his part. To solve it and fund his election campaign to be the next state governor, the mayor decides to select Jellystone as a logging site, and Jellystone is prepared to be shut down.

To save the park from being shut down, Ranger Smith holds a Centennial festival where he hopes to make a profit selling Season Passes. To sabotage the effort, Mayor Brown plays on Ranger Jones' desire to be head ranger and promises him the position if the funds are not raised. Yogi had promised Smith to stay out of sight during the festival, but Jones convinces him to go ahead with the helping plan. Yogi tries to please the crowd with a waterskiing performance which goes awry when he inadvertently sets his cape on fire. In the ensuing chaos, the fireworks Smith set up are knocked over and ignited prematurely, launching them into the assembled audience who flee in a panic. After Jellystone is shut down, Ranger Smith is forced to stay in Evergreen Park, a small urban enclave choked with litter and pollution, but not after he tells Yogi that Yogi is not as smart as he thinks he is. Now seeing that their home is in danger of being destroyed, Yogi and Boo Boo travel to Evergreen Park, where Smith places the clues that Mayor Brown had given him, that Brown and his chief of staff, are planning to cut down Jellystone and its trees, to make money. They come back to Jellystone, and along with Rachel plan to stop the sale of the park. They learn that Boo Boo's pet turtle is a rare and endangered species, which means that the Park cannot be destroyed with the turtle there. Ranger Jones also teams up with them, after reforming when he learns Mayor Brown's plans for Jellystone. Mayor Brown captures the turtle and tells his Chief of Staff to take it away, knowing that if it is no longer in the Park there is nothing to stop him cutting down the trees. He confronts Yogi and the others, admitting that he is not worried that he has broken the law, and that the only thing he cares about is power.

However, after Mayor Brown begins his press conference, Rachel realises that the camera in Boo Boo's bow tie has been filming the whole time and has captured the Mayor's confession. The turtle escapes from Brown's Chief of Staff by using his frog-like tongue to pull itself through the car window and out into the park. Ranger Smith connects Boo Boo's camera to the jumbotron so that his confession is played to the assembled members of the press, and he is dragged away by police officers. Brown's chief of staff attempts to run off, but Rachel pins him to the ground. Smith resumes his post as head ranger, and he and Rachel admit their romantic feelings about each other. Jones works on the park's entrance booth, handing out leaflets about the rare turtle to the vastly increased number of visitors, while Yogi and Boo Boo are stealing picnic baskets once again.

Cast[link]

Live action actors[link]

• Tom Cavanagh as Ranger Smith, the head ranger of Jellystone Park and the film's deuteragonist.
• Anna Faris as Rachel Johnson, a nature documentary filmmaker, and Ranger Smith's love interest. She is called "Miss Movie Lady" or "Miss Moviemaker Lady" by Yogi and Boo Boo.
• T. J. Miller as Ranger Jones, a park ranger who is tricked by Mayor Brown into getting Jellystone shut down, making the excuse that Jones will be the head ranger of the park.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]}
• Andrew Daly as Mayor Brown, a mayor and main antagonist who wants to shut Jellystone Park down so that he can make money for his city and become governor.
• Nate Corddry as the Chief of Staff, Mayor Brown's assistant and the film's secondary antagonist.

Voice actors[link]

• Dan Aykroyd as Yogi Bear, the picnic basket-stealing talking bear and titular protagonist who lives in Jellystone Park.
• Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo Bear, Yogi's sidekick, and sometimes the voice of reason.
• Josh Robert Thompson as the narrator.

Production[link]

On October 2, 2008, it was confirmed that a live-action/CGI Yogi Bear movie was in the works.^[3][11] Ash Brannon was originally scheduled to direct the film but was replaced by Eric Brevig (Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D) when it was decided that the film would be produced as a 3-D project. Filming primarily took place in New Zealand, as it was winter in the northern hemisphere and to wait for summer would put the production end time to be 6 months longer than if in southern hemisphere.

Like many Hanna-Barbera characters, in the original cartoon, Yogi's personality and mannerisms were based on a popular celebrity of the time. Art Carney's Ed Norton character on The Honeymooners was said to be Yogi's inspiration;^[12][13] his voice mannerisms broadly mimic Carney as Norton.^[14] Norton, in turn, received influence from Borscht Belt and comedians of vaudeville.^[13] Dan Aykroyd, the voice actor of Yogi Bear, stated that he is trying to evoke the influences that shaped the original Yogi Bear's voice. Aykroyd said, "It's about hitting certain notes, going back to those old Lower East Side rhythms, the Catskills, Jersey, Upstate New York. It's the Yiddish language, essentially, being spoken in English. It's the 'setup, delivery, punch' that sitcoms live on today. That's where the origin of American humor is."^[13] Aykroyd has stated that he grew up watching Yogi Bear on the long, cold, dark afternoons in his native Ottawa: "As a kid growing up in Ottawa, Canada, where the sky turns dark in the winter at about 3:30, Yogi Bear was my fire, my hearth, when I would come home. I would immediately turn on the TV while I thawed out."^[15]

Justin Timberlake came in with a prepared Boo-Boo voice; when he was learning to sing when he was younger, he imitated various cartoon characters. Eric Brevig said that he intended to make a film that did not want parents who remembered watching Yogi Bear cartoons to feel marginalized and displaced by the contemporary rendition of Yogi Bear.^[13]

The film's first trailer was released online on July 28, 2010. It was also attached with Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and Alpha and Omega.^[16] A second trailer premiered with Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, and a third trailer premiered with Megamind, Tangled, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. It features a Todd Collins song called "Walk, Walk, Walk." One of the trailers was also attached with UK showings of Tron: Legacy.

The film was originally slated for release on June 25, 2010, but was pushed back to December 17, 2010 to avoid competition with Grown Ups.^[3]

Rhythm and Hues provided CGI character animation for Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo Bear and the Turtle in the film. The company had previously worked with Hanna-Barbera on past theatrical productions: The Flintstones (1994), its prequel Viva Rock Vegas (2000), Scooby-Doo (2002), and its sequel Monsters Unleashed (2004).

Reception[link]

Critical response[link]

Yogi Bear received generally negative reviews from film critics. Based on 90 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 13% "Rotten" approval rating for critics, with an average score of 3.5/10. The site's consensus stated "Yogi Bear's 3D effects and all-star voice cast are cold comfort for its aggressively mediocre screenplay."^[17] The compiled score on Metacritic is 35 out of 100. One of few positive reviews came from film critics at Spill.com, who appreciated the film staying true to its original source material, and not trying to "hip it up", comparing the 2007 film Alvin and the Chipmunks. The critics also liked Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake's performances. Common Sense Media gave the film one star, saying "Dumber-than-average family comedy won't even impress kids." IGN gave the film two stars, and summed up their review by saying "Of course, Yogi Bear is meant as a kids movie. And one supposes that it works on that level (the little ones at the press screening I attended seemed mildly amused). But we learned long ago that kids movies can operate on more than one level, and that's not something that director Eric Brevig (Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D) or his screenwriters are interested in. The result is a movie that's dumber than the average bear. Though at least it has a piss joke in it."

Box office[link]

Yogi Bear debuted at the American and Canadian box office at #2 behind Tron: Legacy, with an under-performing $16,411,322;^[18] compared to Tron Legacy's $44,026,211. The opening weekend was lower than Warner Bros. expected, but executives believed that the film would hold well throughout the holiday season.^[19] The film earned $28 million in its first seven days, becoming Warner Bros.' top-grossing start for a family film for that year. In its second weekend, the film fell 53% to $7.8 million, falling to fifth place.

This number was a much harder fall than what Warner Bros. was hoping for, but it blamed the drop on Christmas Eve landing on a Friday plus the big snowstorm in the eastern United States during that period. On Monday, that blame seemed justified, as the film jumped up 11% from Sunday to $3.6 million, which was altogether a 33% jump from its previous Monday. In its third weekend, the film jumped up 66% to $13 million and ranking fourth. The next weekend, it dropped 46% and ranked eighth with $6.8 million. Over the Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend, it was able to pick up $7.4 million for the four-day, jumping up 12% from the previous weekend.

The film has picked up $100,246,011 in the U.S. and Canada and also has a worldwide total of $201,584,141. Against an $80 million budget, the film has become a surprise box office hit.

Awards and Nominations[link]

2011 Teen Choice Awards

• Choice Movie: Animation Voice - Justin Timberlake (nominated)

Sequel[link]

Though the film received considerably poor reviews, Warner Bros. announced that they were moving forward with a sequel, scheduled to be released sometime in 2013.^[20] Joshua Sternin and Jeffrey Ventimilia would write the first draft. Donald De Line and Karen Rosenfelt will be producing, with Andrew Haas executive producing.^[21]

Home media[link]

Warner Home Video released the film on Blu-ray/DVD on March 22, 2011 in three versions:

• DVD (single-disc)
• Blu-ray (single-disc)
• Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy
• Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Yogi Bear at the Internet Movie Database
• Yogi Bear at Rotten Tomatoes
• National Wildlife Federation: Activity Guide for Educators and Parents