Great Danes, chipmunks, house cats, now bruins -- and you thought the only things in Hollywood that needed to be spayed and neutered were Snooki and The Situation.
But no -- the CG cartoon animal population is multiplying like pixelated rabbits (or reality stars).
Already, there's been Scooby Doo, Marmaduke, Garfield and, of course, Alvin and the Chipmunks and its "squeakquel." The latter two have collectively earned $800 million worldwide, apparently demonstrating the limitless appeal of anthropomorphized digitized wildlife and puns involving nuts.
The latest to arrive? Yogi Bear, inspired by the 1960s Hanna-Barbera animated sitcom about a necktie-sporting bear who walks upright and is forever dreaming up schemes to relieve visitors to Jellystone Park of their picnic baskets.
Now I've got nothing against introducing young audiences to "classic" characters from bygone, pre-Xbox eras. But why do they all have to feel so corporate, so soulless, so creatively leaden?
And honestly, just because a character once had his own cartoon (or comic strip) doesn't automatically mean he/she/it merits a big screen translation.
Scooby Doo, for example, has mysteries and ghosts and special "snacks" upon which to hang a plot. Yogi Bear offers only trees, the odd lunch heist and a pair of amusingly channeled vocal performances.
Those come from Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake as bombastic Yogi and his long-suffering sidekick Boo-Boo, respectively. Both performers deliver lively impersonations that should please older fans; Timberlake, especially, is uncanny. Forget the Oscar nomination for The Social Network -- this is the performance he should be campaigning for. (Yes, I'm kidding, but not as much as you might think.)
Presumably to plump up the movie to a still scant 82 minutes -- and realizing an hour and a half or so of CG bears stealing from tourists would grow tiresome -- director Eric Brevig (and three screenwriters!) do their best to fill time with two subplots.
The first introduces Anna Faris as a documentary filmmaker who travels to Jellystone for the express purpose of capturing Yogi in his natural habitat. Apparently talking bears who have the wherewithal to wear a hat and tie but not pants are rare. More significantly, she's a love interest for earnest but lonely Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh).
The second storyline involves a corrupt politician (Andrew Daly) and his smarmy chief of staff (Nathan Corddry) conspiring to have Jellystone rezoned as agricultural land, meaning it can be logged.
Along the way there is CG slapstick and tomfoolery aplenty, with Yogi and Boo-Boo flying mechanical basket-snatching contraptions and enjoying various water sports (skiing, rafting, plunging off waterfalls, etc.). Frankly, that sounds a lot more entertaining than it actually is.
Both Cavanagh and Faris are likeable presences, but the screenplay treats them as an afterthought. More significantly, neither interacts convincingly with Yogi and Boo-Boo. (It's like they had to deliver their dialogue to tennis balls or something.)
Will kids mind? Probably not -- certainly not the undiscriminating ones. But their parents should be forewarned: It's no picnic.
