Yogi Bear, from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon which dates back to 1958, makes the leap to the big screen. A live action film featuring computer-animated wildlife, Yogi is voiced by life-long fan Dan Ackroyd, his sidekick Boo Boo is Justin Timberlake.
When a corrupt mayor announces he'll turn failing Jellystone Park into a logging facility, Yogi and Boo Boo team with Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh, TV's Scrubs) and a wildlife documentarian (Anna Faris, The House Bunny) to save their home.
Yogi Bear was shot in New Zealand - Woodhill Forest in Auckland and the Aratiatia rapids in Taupo standing in for Jellystone.
NB: Andrew saw the 3D version of this film.
Yogi Bear is another classic cartoon turned live-action film, suitably cheerful and colourful, if a little light on imagination.
The quality of the 3D is excellent, having been conceived and filmed in the format. I can’t help but feel that the bears would have looked better as two-dimensional Roger Rabbit type figures, identical to the original drawings, but the new CG versions are cuddly-looking and would make good toys.
The picturesque backdrop of Jellystone Park is in reality comprised from various New Zealand forests, lakes and rivers, with some redwood trunks and computerised mountains inserted. Some central Auckland locations are fun for locals to spot.
Yogi Bear will babysit younger kids for long enough. The storyline is woefully unimaginative, all about baddie corporate types who want to sell Jellystone thus leaving Yogi and BooBoo to save the day. I found the movie quite flat and uninteresting but then, I’m a grown-up.
By Andrew Hedley, Flicks.co.nz
Simple Plesent
Yogi is a DICK
This movie is so good. I am an 11 year old boy who is telling the truth. The critics told you that anybody over the age of 8 won't like it. They were wrong! I'm buying it the day it comes out and adding it to my movie collection. WOOP WOOP!
Roar Roar. Come and join Yogi Bear and his adventures with event cinemas and video easy. Yogi Bear lives in the forest at Jelly Stone park he sleeps in a cave as small as a cot but as big as a baby’s cast. Yogi Bear doesn’t always get along with Ranger Smith but they do try to get along with each other. He is a fuzzy looking bear who likes to steal visitor’s picnic baskets with some weird and wonderful plans. One day his sneaky mind comes up with an extraordinary plan, a picnic nabber. The picnic nabber steals baskets for him. Yogi is an adult bear who always wears a ragged red tie and a grimy green hat. He is a fun bear who comes up with glorious plans that never work out. Yogi Bear is destroying the park and the Mayor fires the Ranger Smith for not keeping the place tidy. The Mayor starts to take over the park and demolish it. Ranger Smith soon finds out that Yogi Bears very rare Turtle is somewhere in the forest and since the Turtle is very smart they need to find it fast before the mayor gets it and lock him up at a zoo. Yogi Bear is a very funny movie because when they decide to do a stunt drive in the picnic nabber, it gets out of control and at the same time they are over a river. Then when they check the instruction menu it shows a picture of them screaming so they start screaming and they end up crash landing into the river. So why not take your family to a five star rated movie and have a lot of fun. Yogi Bear is also in 3D. So why not, who doesn’t like 3D? ………..
Yogi is still smarter than the average bear, but Yogi Bear is much less smart than most of the year's kid-friendly cartoons.
There's exactly one thing about the misbegotten big-screen Yogi Bear that might make you think back with any fondness to the Hanna-Barbera cartoons on which it's based. That would be Justin Timberlake's charming performance as the voice of Boo-Boo Bear.
If you have fond memories of Yogi Bear from your childhood, you'd be hard pushed to remember why after watching this big screen revival of the 1960s' Hanna-Barbera series.
It's nature vs corporate greed in this latest film for Yogi Bear, partially shot here in good ole NZ.
A bland and innocuous small-fry outing that retains a measure of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon's charm, though scarcely enough to justify the time, expense and visual-effects trickery it must have taken to inflate an endearing 2D cartoon into a dopey 3D extravaganza.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 13th Jan 2011.
Release date: January 13th 2011.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
