Day: January 11, 2012

Without looking, I am going to assume that Yogi Bear probably failed at gaining really any profit. Its goal is to make a live action version of an old cartoon, one kids nowadays do not watch. So it wants to be a kids movie, but appeals to a non-kids audience. So adults going to it will be disappointed in it because it is a kids movie only, while kids won’t want to go to it because they don’t know about it.

Bad strategy. Recreating old cartoons into live action movies is stupid. You will lose money probably.

And not having any money is what this movie is about.

Yogi (Dan Aykroyd) and Boo-Boo (Justin Timberlake) are doing what they normally do. Being talking bears. Ranger Smith is played by Tom Cavanagh (Bad choice) and his assistant Ranger is T.J. Miller, the only two rangers in Jellystone. But, yeah. The city was going bankrupt, unless the mayor could do something. So he wants to rezone the park into a non park and sell the land to logging companies, giving the town and everyone money, yay!

So it is up to Yogi, Boo-Boo, Ranger Smith (who doesn’t care about their help, no matter how many people would love to see a talking bear) and Anna Faris (As a crazy documentary nature person) to try and save Jellystone!

HOORAY!

Here is the problems with the movie though.

1) There is not enough Yogi Bear/Boo-Boo in it. I think the ranger gets more screen time. Fuck that. We don’t want to see more Ranger Smith than Yogi, especially if he never wears the damn hat.

2) Their way of saving Jellystone involves a law that protects it. Unfortunately it is one of the dumbest and least successful laws ever, normally meant to screw people out of their homes.

3) They do save the park, but don’t bring in additional revenue for the city. So, presumably, the city DOES go bankrupt, people lose their jobs, and somehow that makes more people want to go to the park? They somehow get business at the end, but must be from out of towners, because that city is probably a ghost town.

I enjoyed the first half of the movie more than the second half. Or at least just the Yogi Bear scenes. All the other scenes were stupid. I had laughed on more than one occasion because of the good bear commentary. But there wasn’t enough. That is an obvious problem someone making this movie would have observed. It’d be like making a transformers movie and having it be about a human instead. Oh wait.

I am not sure if I ever saw previews for Arthur at all. It just kind of came out and I was like “Oh whats this?? More Russell Brand Shenanigans? Jolly good.” or something British. All I knew was that it was apparently the way more RomCom based version of the 80s Arthur, another movie I really didn’t know existed.

If anything, once you knew the movie existed, it demanded attention like a spoiled rich adult.

Arthur is about a spoiled rich adult. He acts a fool, like that one song, more or less. And he is stupid expensive. Outlandish things are done in this movie with no regards to funds. So whatever it is, he is loaded.

His mom wants to keep the wealthy with the wealthy though. He is being forced to marry Jennifer Garner, a much better person to run the family company than Arthur, which will give the shareholders reasons to not flip out. I think. Garner is fine with marrying for business of course, but not Arthur. He doesn’t like her! He instead likes Greta Gerwig, this free spirited New Yorker.

But if he doesn’t marry Garner. He will lose his trust. Can he be poor for love? Also in this film is Helen Mirren as his caretaker and Luis Guzman as his manservant.

Also this scene happens early on.

As far as I can tell, they made Arthur in this movie more of a screw up because he is just spoiled and has no real parental love. But in the 80s it was because the guy was an alcoholic? Big choice difference right there.

Unfortunately, even if it was supposed it was supposed to be a comedy, I barely laughed. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Plot was basic, and full of mostly smaller scenes that kind of helped, but really didn’t advance the plot as much. I don’t know, I just didn’t find Russel Brand being stupid rich and childish. Thought it was a dumb, which is a shame.

So I’d say this movie is easily forgettable, and ignorable. Easier to ignore if there isn’t a review on it. My bad.