Yogi Bear (film)

Yogi Bear
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Eric Brevig
Screenplay by	Brad Copeland Joshua Sternin Jeffrey Ventimilia
Produced by	Donald De Line Karen Rosenfelt
Starring	Dan Aykroyd Justin Timberlake Anna Faris Tom Cavanagh T. J. Miller
Narrated by	Josh Robert Thompson
Cinematography	Peter James
Edited by	Kent Beyda
Music by	John Debney
Production companies	Sunswept Entertainment De Line Pictures Rhythm and Hues
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	December 17, 2010 (2010-12-17)
Running time	80 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$80 million
Box office	$200,446,011

Yogi Bear is a 2010 American live-action film adaptation of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series The Yogi Bear Show directed by Eric Brevig. Voice-actors Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake star as the voices of Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo Bear respectively. Tom Cavanagh, Anna Faris, T. J. Miller, and Andrew Daly also star. 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. The film was released on December 17, 2010.

Plot

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 Cavanaugh) and Jones (T. J. Miller) try to prevent them from doing so. Meanwhile, Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly) realizes that his city is facing a financial crisis 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 "find some place losing money so he can earn it", and he picks Jellystone, the park where the bears live. The park is selected as a logging site, and Jellystone is shut down. Now seeing that their home is in danger of being destroyed, it's up to Yogi and Boo Boo, along with Ranger Smith and a documentary-shooter named Rachel (Anna Faris), to save the park.

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' ambition 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 a plan help. 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. Smith, Rachel, Yogi, and Boo Boo plan to stop the sale of Jellystone. They learn that Boo Boo's pet turtle is a rare species, which means that the Park cannot be destroyed with the turtle there. Mayor Brown finds out and orders his guards to kidnap the turtle so that he can cut down all trees of Jellystone and confesses to Yogi, Smith, Rachel, and Boo Boo, that he doesn't care about the law and wants power more than what is best for the people and the environment.

However, Rachel had previously put a video camera in Boo Boo's bow tie as part of the documentary which later recorded Mayor Brown's confession. The turtle escapes Mayor Brown's assistant by using his frog-like tongue to pull itself into the forest from the car. Yogi and Boo Boo keep the guards distracted so that Ranger Smith can upload Mayor Brown's unintended confession to the jumbo screen. When the confession is replayed, the police arrest Mayor Brown and his Chief of Staff, who lies that there is no rare turtle when the turtle reveals himself to the people. Smith tells Yogi that he really is smart and thanks him for saving Jellystone. Jones loses the position of head ranger and Smith takes it back, but Jones still works there, giving out papers about how Jellystone has a rare type of turtle.

Cast

• Tom Cavanagh as Ranger Smith, the head ranger of Jellystone Park.
• Anna Faris as Rachel, a nature documentary filmmaker, and Ranger Smith's love interest.
• 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.
• Andrew Daly as Mayor Brown, a mayor 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.

Voices

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

Production

On October 2, 2008, it was confirmed that a live-action/CGI Yogi Bear movie was in the works. 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. The film followed the adventures of Yogi and Boo-Boo, who are subjects of a nature-documentary film-maker (Anna Faris), during their continual quest for picnic baskets. Ranger Smith, as usual, does his best to keep the baskets away from the bears. 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.

Voicing of Yogi Bear

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; his voice mannerisms broadly mimic Carney as Norton. Norton, in turn, received influence from Borscht Belt and comedians of vaudeville. 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." 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."

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.

Release

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. 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 scheduled to be released in June 2010. However, it was pushed back to a tentative December 2010.

Effects

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), The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000), Scooby-Doo (2002), Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004) and has been recently been working on The Smurfs (2011).

Reception

Critical response

Yogi Bear received generally negative reviews from film critics. Based on 89 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." The compiled score on Metacritic is 33 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 1 Star. Saying "Dumber-than-average family comedy won't even impress kids." and IGN gave the film 2 Stars. IGN 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 3D) 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

Yogi Bear debuted at the American and Canadian box office at #2 behind Tron: Legacy, with an under-performing $16,411,322; 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 through the holiday season. The film earned $28 million in its first seven days, becoming Warner Bros.' top-grossing start for a family film this 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 was proven to be the cause, 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 $200,446,011. Against an $80 million budget, the film has become a surprise box office hit.

Home media

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

• DVD release (single-disc)
• Blu-ray release
• 3D Blu-ray release

External links

• Official website
• Yogi Bear at IMDb
• Yogi Bear at Rotten Tomatoes
• National Wildlife Federation: Activity Guide for Educators and Parents