Movie Review: ‘Yogi Bear’

“Yogi Bear” gives cheap hackwork a bad name. Which is a shame, because hackwork made this industry.

Fledgling director and special effects veteran Eric Brevig managed 92 diverting minutes of schlock with the 3-D “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (2008), which offered some hope (against hope) for “Yogi Bear.” You may know that “Yogi Bear” is derived from the animated Hanna-Barbera TV original. Yogi himself was introduced as a character on “The Huckleberry Hound Show” in the late 1950s; the character’s yen for the pic-a-nic baskets, not to mention the vocal inflections, amounted to an appealing knockoff of Art Carney’s Ed Norton on “The Honeymooners.”

You may also know that just about anyone can “do” Yogi’s voice. The new movie didn’t really need Dan Aykroyd to do it. Nor did it need Justin Timberlake to “do” Boo Boo, Yogi’s fellow resident of Jellystone Park. What it needed was a joke or two, and perhaps one less snot- or spit-related attempt at a joke.

This is a live- action movie with a couple of animated bears (plus a cartoon turtle) forced to live within drab confines. Tom Cavanagh underplays with an air of “Oh, well. I’m making more than you make” as Ranger Smith, whose park is being turned into a logging-rights nightmare of devastation by the local mayor ( Andrew Daly, given far too much screen time; the movie isn’t called “Mayor Brown,” it’s called “Yogi Bear”). I did enjoy some of the weirdo line readings brought to the role of the visiting documentary filmmaker played by Anna Faris. But the story about Yogi’s fall from grace, Ranger Smith’s self-loathing issues and the fight to save the park from rank commercialism comes to criminally little.

Intriguing 3-D side note: I can’t recall seeing a recent 3-D movie wherein you’re watching an action sequence, in this case a white-water rafting sequence, and suddenly you think: Wait, isn’t that ‘60s-style rear-projection behind the actors’ heads? Why am I watching that in 3-D? It’s like looking at a GAF Viewmaster. And if you remember those, this movie isn’t for you. Preteens may not hate “Yogi Bear.” It’s barely 70 minutes long without the end credits. But if Aykroyd contributed any of his own wisecracks to the voice work I’d be surprised, followed by stunned, followed by bargaining, acceptance and not laughing.

mjphillips@tribune.com

‘Yogi Bear’

MPAA rating: PG (for some mild rude humor)

Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes

Playing: In general release