Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jellystone!’ On HBO Max, Where Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo And Classic Hanna-Barbera Characters Return For Weird Adventures

These days, when traditional cartoon characters are showing in rebooted reveals, the cartoons normally observe the traditional templates. Suppose Bugs Bunny and his associates, or Tom & Jerry. However when somebody comes alongside and rethinks not solely the context the characters are in but additionally how they’re drawn, it may be inspiring. That’s the case with Jellystone!, which takes traditional Hanna-Barbera characters — particularly Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo and Cindy Bear — and places them in a completely new gentle.

JELLYSTONE!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: At Jellystone Hospital, an previous girl is greeted by Doggie Daddy (C.H. Greenblatt), who says, “right now is your fortunate day!” When the woman asks if her coronary heart transplant got here by way of, Doggie Daddy says she’ll get a command efficiency from his daughter Augie Doggie (Georgie Kidder).

The Gist: Jellystone is a city that’s populated with all types of bizarre creatures (all of that are traditional Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters), not the least of that are Yogi Bear (Jeff Bergman), Boo-Boo (Greenblatt) and Cindy Bear (Grace Helbig). They’re docs on the hospital, and so they leap in to save lots of the previous girl when she flatlines whereas listening to Augie Doggie’s off-key rendition of “Kitten Round.”

After that incident, the three bears go to the cafeteria, and Yogi can’t determine which entree to eat. So Cindy comes up with a superb resolution; she knocks Yogi out with a pan and installs a nuclear abdomen in him. One downside: He by no means will get full. So Yogi goes on a rampage round city, consuming all the things in sight, together with Boo-Boo. The Mayor, Huckleberry Hound (Jim Conroy), is at a loss, Cindy says she was “pooping” when this went down, and High Cat (Thomas Lennon) tries to promote folks unusual spray paint cans as safety — till Yogi eats him.

Within the second journey, a furry purple catastrophe has befallen the city — Grape Ape has handed out attributable to a meals coma. He’s so enormous that even his drool is a pure catastrophe. Huckleberry Hound dispatches Touché Turtle (Dana Snyder) and his crew to brainstorm concepts. Throughout that point, the medical workforce arrives; Cindy comes up with a plan to see what’s in Grape’s stomach, and Boo-Boo “volunteers” to make the leap. When he sees an enormous meatball, there’s just one particular person with the consuming expertise to chop that child all the way down to dimension: Yogi.

What Reveals Will It Remind You Of? Take just about all of the traditional Hanna-Barbera characters from the ’50s by way of the ’70s that aren’t Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry or The Flintstones, put them in a single city and provides that city the anarchic vitality that Greenblatt has given his earlier reveals, like Harvey Beaks, and also you get Jellystone!

Our Take: Greenblatt’s attempting to attain twin targets with Jellystone!: He desires to refresh all of those traditional characters, a few of whom are nearly 70 years previous, for a brand new technology of youngsters, however remind their dad and mom (or, extra seemingly, grandparents) why these characters have been so fulfilling within the first place. He usually succeeds with the primary purpose, however the jury remains to be out on the second.

This isn’t the primary time that every one of those H-B characters have been collected in a single place, as Gen Xers might inform you: The 1977-78 collection Laff-A-Lympics had most of those characters, together with Scooby and a few others, compete in varied sports activities around the globe (and in house!). After all, for those who’re a fan of a specific character, you seemingly obtained little or no of that character to take pleasure in, and that’s the difficulty we now have with Jellystone!

You might get episodes that function Snagglepuss or Jabberjaw (now a feminine shark as a substitute of 1 that seems like Curly from The Three Stooges) or Captain Caveman, however for essentially the most half you’re going to get just a few seconds of dialogue or a 1-second sight gag at most. Fortunately, Yogi, Boo-Boo and Cindy are prominently featured, so for those who’ve been lacking Yogi in your screens, you’re in luck.

To folks (largely children) who do not know who these characters are, the flurry of them is likely to be a bit complicated and overwhelming to them, however the present strikes such a nutty and slapsticky tone — and a contemporary one, at that, with overlapping dialogue and individuals who discuss much less like cartoons and extra like people — that it won’t matter. To the children, it’s only a city filled with attention-grabbing trying characters, and hopefully the present’s foolish tone can be greater than sufficient to rope the little ones in.

What Age Group Is This For?: The collection is rated TV-G, and we expect children 8 and up will prefer it.

Parting Shot: After Grape Ape burps and will get up from his meals coma, a frozen Augie Doggie (lengthy story) asks the place her father is. We then see Doggie Daddy nonetheless caught in Grape’s purple fur.

Sleeper Star: Thomas Lennon is an impressed alternative for High Cat, who in his unique ’60s incarnation was a huckster of the best order.

Most Pilot-y Line: Probably not a criticism, however questioned what course of Greenblatt and his writers went by way of to determine which characters will get re-gendered. We’re stunned to see a feminine Augie and Jabberjaw, as an example.

Our Name: STREAM IT. Jellystone! is unquestionably going to be a bizarre present for followers of traditional Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but it surely’ll nonetheless be humorous. For teenagers, it’ll simply be humorous.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about meals, leisure, parenting and tech, however he doesn’t child himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared within the New York Instances, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Quick Firm and elsewhere.

Stream Jellystone! On HBO Max