What did you expect? The Hollywood trades are out with their luke-warm reviews of the live action-CG Yogi Bear feature, which opens this Friday, Dec. 17th.
Justin Chang in Variety (review blocked by a pay-wall) says:
“Neither smarter nor dumber than the average family-friendly comedy, “Yogi Bear” is 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….
“…Aykroyd and Timberlake do fine approximations of their characters’ distinctive cartoon voices and speech patterns; teens and adults in particular can keep themselves amused by imagining Timberlake, in one of his more self-effacing career moves, having to record lines like “I have a problem with baked beans” in Boo Boo’s trademark nasal delivery. By comparison, the not-quite-photorealistic, borderline-alien look of these CGI bears is off-putting, the technological advancements of lifelike fur and detailed eye movements being no match for the clean, expressive lines of hand-drawn animation.”
Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter says:
