Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear was Hanna-Barbera’s first animated feature from their own production company, and while it won’t go down in the annuls of cinema history as anything other than a pleasant enterprise for fans of the show, the quality of Warner Archive’s Blu-ray gives it an appealing sheen.
The Production: 3/5
When MGM closed its animation department in 1957, Tom and Jerry masterminds Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera started their own production company for television animation. An instant success, their steady string of hit shows included the first animated series ever awarded an Emmy, The Huckleberry Hound Show. The breakout star of that show was the picnic basket-loving Yogi Bear and his pal Boo-Boo, so popular, in fact, that the duo was soon spun off into their own long-running series. In 1964 came a feature film starring the pair Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear. While not the smash hit the creators might have been hoping for (after all, you could still see Yogi’s antics for free on television), the film has had longevity with its succession of Yogi antics and a song score filled with catchy tunes that fall liltingly on the ear. Warner Archive has now presented us with a high-definition version of the movie, and it’s never looked nor sounded better.
Excited that spring has once again come to Jellystone National Park, Yogi Bear (Daws Butler, vocals by Bill Lee and James Darren) and his pal Boo-Boo (Don Messick, vocals by Ernest Newton) go out in search of acres of food provided by a fresh crop of park visitors. Tired of trying to rein in Yogi’s insatiable hunger for the visitors’ picnic lunches, Ranger John Smith (Don Messick) makes arrangements for Yogi to be transferred to the San Diego Zoo, but Yogi outsmarts him and substitutes Corn Pone (Hal Smith) for himself, unknown to Boo-Boo. When Yogi’s gal pal Cindy Bear (Julie Bennett, vocals by Jackie Ward) hears that Yogi is gone, she volunteers to leave, too, not knowing that she’s being sent not to San Diego but to St. Louis. Once she realizes her mistake and manages to get knocked off the train, she’s kidnapped by Chizzling Bros. Circus owners Grifter (Mel Blanc) and Mugger (Don Messick) and their snickering dog Snively (J. Pat O’Malley) and put to work as a high-wire artist. Upon hearing that she’s missing, Yogi and Boo-Boo set out to rescue her and bring their little trio back to Jellystone.
The screenplay by Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, and Warren Foster give fans of the television series exactly what they want to start with: a series of Yogi antics in order to steal the contents of picnic baskets for the “smarter than the average bear’s” insides: posing as a food inspector at the park’s entrance, donning the role of Robin Hood Bear who robs from the rich and gives to the (Yogi) bear, and training an ant army to retrieve picnic goodies for his consumption. Even after Ranger Smith thinks he’s off to San Diego, Yogi assumes the mantle of “The Brown Phantom” who runs roughshod over the campsites at the park. But a ninety-minute movie can’t sustain that kind of trickery for the entire film, so the adventures of our three heroes away from the park constitute more than an hour of the film’s running time abetted by a song score by Ray Gilbert and Doug Goodwin, and while none of the songs ever reached anything like the level of standards, inside the film they’re very effective: Cindy’s longing for more than friendship from Yogi in “Like I, Like You,” the fun barbershop quartet of bears (Jonah and the Wailers) crooning to Cindy “Go St. Louis,” Yogi and Boo-Boo’s “Give Me a Parade” after they find out Cindy’s performing in the circus, and the film’s catchiest melody “Whistle Your Way Back Home” for the trio once they’ve made their escape from the circus. They’ve even thrown in a fantasy sequence with Yogi crooning a love song on a Venice gondola (with James Darren’s voice this time) “Vene, Veno, Vena.” Somehow the trio ends up in New York City, all offering different locales for Yogi’s shenanigans than Jellystone Park and using animation that won’t be confused with the quality of Disney’s feature films but at a level much superior to the animation used for the television series.
Daws Butler and Don Messick provide the familiar and ingratiating voices for Yogi and Boo-Boo, and Messick goes beyond the call of duty enacting Ranger Smith and six other characters in the show. All of the voice work is wonderfully entertaining from this group of pros, and the singing voices for the three leads all pair nicely with their speaking counterparts.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film is presented at its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 in 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Color is bright and chipper throughout (though Yogi a couple of times flips from brown to dark yellow during opticals), and there are no visual anomalies like scratches, dirt, or debris to distract from the viewing experience. The movie has been divided into 35 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo sound mix offers a strong, solid wall of sound across the front soundstage. Dialogue has been well recorded, and the jaunty tunes by Gilbert and Goodwin and the background score by Marty Paich all register nicely in the mix with no distracting hiss, pops, flutter, or crackle on the soundtrack.
Special Features: 1/5
Yogi Bear’s Birthday Party (22:54, HD): a television special with many of Yogi’s Hanna-Barbera stablemates (Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Pixie, Dixie, and Mr. Jenks, Yacky Doodle) dropping by to celebrate his birthday.
Overall: 3/5
Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear was Hanna-Barbera’s first animated feature film from their own production company, and while it won’t go down in the annuls of cinema history as anything other than a pleasant enterprise for fans of the show, the quality of Warner Archive’s Blu-ray gives it an appealing sheen.
Hey There, it’s Yogi Bear [Blu-Ray]
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Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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