Let's Watch This: "Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats" (1988)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the movie I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this movie, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

Remember how I said in my review of Top Cat: The Movie that it actually wasn't the first movie that T.C. starred in? And remember how I said that we'd be looking at the actual first movie that they starred in another time? Well, guess what we're reviewing today?

That's right, it's Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats! This film, directed by Paul Sommer and Charles A. Nichols, has a few things over the 2011 film we've already looked at. First of all, it was made by Hanna-Barbera themselves as part of the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 series of films. I've already looked at another one of those films, Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose, and we'll probably be reviewing all ten of them at some point on this blog. I suppose I probably should've reviewed them in the order that they aired, but that ship has sailed (Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose was the fourth one). Second, they were able to get most of the original voice cast back - only Benny the Ball and Officer Dibble had to be recast. The film aired in syndication on March 20th, 1988. It's also been released on both VHS and DVD.

I'm not sure how often this reaired on TV, but I do know it aired at least once on Boomerang. How do I know this? Because I saw it on Boomerang at some point in the 2000s! This was back when Boomerang would air ANYTHING Hanna-Barbera made, and they certainly weren't going to let how obscure it was stop them. To prove my point, I'll add that I also saw Hanna-Barbera's Jack and the Beanstalk movie with Gene Kelly on Boomerang during the 2000s, too. I really do have Boomerang to thank for making me a fan of Hanna-Barbera. Now, whether or not Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats is a good movie, I don't recall. But that's what we're here to find out today!

The film opens on a beautiful morning in Manhattan (for those unaware, that's where the show takes place). Top Cat (voiced by Arnold Stang) wakes up, jumps out of his trash can, and summons all of the other members of his gang. You know which one is which, don't you? Well, just in case you don't, in order we have...

- Benny the Ball (voiced by Avery Schreiber as opposed to Maurice Gosfield), the short blue one and Top Cat's right-hand... er, right-paw... man... er, cat.

- Choo-Choo (Marvin Kaplan), the pink cat in the turtleneck who kind of looks like Snagglepuss... who seems to be missing. Maybe he's on vacation or something?

- Fancy-Fancy (John Stephenson), the brown ladies' man cat.

- Spook (Leo De Lyon), the greenish one who talks like a beatnik.

- And Brain (also Leo De Lyon), the orange one with the purple shirt who's a few French fries short of a Happy Meal.

There. Now you have no excuse for not telling them apart.

Although Fancy-Fancy seems to have turned orange for this movie, so telling him and
Brain apart when they're both wearing the boy scout getup could be difficult. Just look at
their eyes - Brain's always got that half-lidded expression.

Today, Top Cat and his boys are acting as boy scouts, doing good deeds like returning hats that blow off of peoples' heads - after using a fan to blow the hats off their heads themselves. While he's out looking for a good deed to do, Benny notices an old lady in tattered clothing pushing a shopping cart full of junk. Clearly she must be homeless. Or at least very eccentric.

He runs over and tries to help her cross the street, but this old lady's got an attitude problem. One thing leads to another, and her cart winds up smashed by a car.

"Wait, you mean this ISN'T the dairy aisle at Whole Foods?!"

"Nope! It's a Manhattan sidewalk!"

"Dagnabbit! I really gotta get myself some glasses..."

Well, Benny might not be getting a merit badge for helping an old lady across the street, but he DOES save her from getting crushed by a bunch of sacks and barrels falling from a great height. Fortunately, even though this is a cartoon, the old lady isn't all "you saved my life, so now I'm going to be your servant and follow you around driving you crazy until I save your life and we're even". Instead, she takes out her memory book and asks Benny to write his name in it. That way, she'll always remember the cat who saved her life.

After Benny leaves, a limo drives up to the old lady and she steps inside. Her name is Gertrude Vandergelt (Linda Gary), and she's not homeless - quite the opposite, in fact. She's rich. Very, very rich. And as her limo driver, James (Rob Paulsen) drives her back to her mansion in Beverly Hills... wait a minute, they drove all the way from Beverly Hills, which is in California, to Manhattan, which is in New York, and back again? They're on opposite sides of the country! I sure hope James is getting paid well for driving her...

"Beverly Hills, that's where I wanna be...
Gimme, gimme, livin' in Beverly Hills..."

As they drive by the Beverly Hills Car Wash, Gertrude mentions that she wishes her niece Amy were there to enjoy the sights with her, but she's been missing for quite some time. Unbeknownst to her, Amy (Lilly Moon) is currently working at that very car wash, and she's miserable. It's a pity that, in all of the time that Amy's supposedly been missing, Gertrude never went inside that car wash. Of course, since she's rich I'm sure she has servants to wash her car for her, but still...

There's a joke here about how, since it's Beverly Hills, they wash the cars with bottled
mineral water. That's kind of funny, I guess.

Back in Manhattan, T.C.'s gang meets back up in the alley to show him what they've gotten as rewards for doing good deeds. Choo-Choo... yes, he's here now, I guess the animators just forgot to put him in the first scene... brings back a giant tire. Great, now all they need is some rope and they can make a swing out of it. Fancy-Fancy brings back... wet laundry. Apparently he was taking a nap in the dryer... which is incredibly dangerous, Fancy-Fancy! Don't take a nap in a DRYER! Or a washing machine, for that matter!

T.C., if you're gonna do a Groucho Marx impression, you gotta have the mustache, the
glasses, and the bushy eyebrows. Maybe the Genie from Aladdin can give you some pointers...

But then Officer Dibble (John Stephenson as opposed to Allen Jenkins) shows up, and he is MAD! You see, Brain's "good deed" was to splash mud on the windshield of his police car so he could clean it. Officer Dibble is all "I'm gonna make sure you guys get the book thrown at you!" but then he randomly gets a call on his radio telling him that he's been given permission to quit the force, which immediately makes him giddy. And I know Hanna-Barbera isn't known for having the best animation, but I have to bring this up: the animators can't seem to decide which kind of eyes they want Officer Dibble to have. He keeps switching back and forth between having the dot eyes he had in the original show, having pupils, and having pupils but without the whites of the eyes being colored in (a la The Roman Holidays).

I tried to take a screencap to demonstrate, but wound up with this one where Dibble's
eyes were closed.

One week later, Top Cat decides to dress up as a fortune teller. Yes, this means that we get to see T.C. in drag... and I'm getting flashbacks to Lilo and Stitch: The Series. He practices his fortune telling by reading Benny's palm, telling him that he will meet a tall, dark stranger. "Maybe it'll be Magic Johnson!" Benny exclaims.

If she's a lady, I'm a Verminious Knid

Just then, some guy named Sid Buckman of Buckman, Buckman, Buckman and Cash (Richard Erdman) walks in and says that he needs to talk to Benny. He tells them that Gertrude Vandergelt, heiress to the Vandergelt Diamond Mines, has died and that she's named Benny in her will, which he'll be reading that night in Beverly Hills. T.C., of course, is all over that.

So Top Cat and his gang go to Beverly Hills... how exactly they got there, I don't know, I doubt they can afford plane tickets... and hitch a ride on the back of a tour bus. Did you know that the Flintstones live in Beverly Hills? Neither did I, but they do!

So do the Rubbles, but I don't have a screencap of them, sorry.

When they get to the Vandergelt Mansion, Top Cat discovers that someone else has taken up residence in Beverly Hills - Officer Dibble! He's now the Vandergelt Mansion's security guard. The heck? You leave the police force and THIS is what you decide to do?

"What's the password, T.C.?"

"Uh... Bill and Joe sent me?"

After their little encounter with Dibble, they walk up to the front door of the mansion and are greeted by Gertrude's sinister-looking butler Snerdly (Henry Polic II), as well as his Russian wolfhound Rasputin (Frank Welker). It's a little weird that in this world, cats are anthropomorphic but dogs aren't... especially considering that the 2011 movie had anthropomorphic dogs in it. I guess it's best that we don't think about it too much.

Gee, I wonder if these two are the villains of the film...

The reading of the will starts up, and we learn that Gertrude left everything to her niece. But since said niece is missing, she decided to leave everything to Benny instead. Everyone else at the reading is MAD - especially Snerdly - because THEY wanted that money, but of course, there's a part of the will that mentions if anything happens to Benny in the next eighty-four hours then the money will go to Snerdly. And you know that Snerdly is gonna take advantage of this.

Top Cat suggests that Benny move into the mansion, but Benny is reluctant to leave the alley until T.C. says that he, Fancy-Fancy, Choo-Choo, Brain, and Spook will be moving in as well. "As I said when those Siamese moved next door, there goes the neighborhood!" Snerdly tells Rasputin... which I guess means that Snerdly is racist. Dibble doesn't seem too jazzed about T.C. and the gang moving in either.

First, Snerdly and Rasputin convince Benny to float in a pool raft called "Titanic II". Tell me, would YOU get on a boat called "Titanic II"?

Fortunately for Snerdly, Benny doesn't recognize a giant red flag when he
sees it.

While Benny's in the raft, Rasputin disguises himself as a shark, and when Benny screams for help, Snerdly dives into the water and shoots his raft with a harpoon... I'm not sure why that required Rasputin to put on a shark fin, but whatever. The raft deflates, and Benny sinks... only for Top Cat to catch him with his fishing rod. Benny: one, Snerdly: zilch.

Choo-Choo and Spook, clearly more Genre Savvy than anyone else in this film, suggest that maybe somebody is trying to get rid of Benny so they can get the money for themselves. Alas, Top Cat shrugs that idea off. Perhaps if he hadn't, he would've found out that Snerdly is currently preparing a salad for Benny doused with hot sauce. Call me crazy, but I don't think hot sauce is lethal. Not that it matters, since Brain winds up knocking the salad into the pool when Snerdly attempts to serve it.

Shouldn't this movie actually be called Benny the Ball and the Beverly Hills Cats?
He's clearly the main character here, not Top Cat...

Snerdly declares that it's time to take off the gloves... and promptly takes off one of HIS skin-toned gloves, revealing himself to have a mechanical hand underneath. Holy frijoles, he's a CYBORG? Where the heck did THIS twist come from? What else do we not know about Snerdly? Did he kill Gertrude so that he'd get her fortune? Did he cause Amy to go missing?! I wouldn't be surprised at this point!

Speaking of Amy, we cut back to her at the car wash, and guess who's there talking to her? Snerdly! So he knows where she is but he never told Gertrude? The fiend! And how was he able to keep this from her? I need answers! But we're gonna have to wait until later to hear them, because next we see the mansion get a visit from Lester Pester (also Rob Paulsen), the host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Furry. Top Cat hogs the interview while Snerdly and Rasputin keep attempting to kill Benny and fail at it thanks to WHACKY SHENANIGANS. However, they do manage to lock him in a sauna, shrinking him down in size.

Also, Top Cat randomly turns pink.

"No, no, Larry! Top Cat is YELLOW! Choo-Choo is the pink cat!"

"Crap. Well, maybe nobody will notice..."

By now, Top Cat and Benny are both convinced that Snerdly is indeed out for blood and Benny wants to get the heck out of Beverly Hills and go back to the alley. And I personally don't blame him at this point. To get Benny back to his normal size, T.C. inflates him with an air pump - a bit too much, resulting in him gaining the ability of flight. Upon seeing this, Snerdly - who was just about to use dark magic - decides to use a crossbow at him. The arrow... goes right by him, but Benny starts deflating anyway.

Hey, Snerdly, Mickey Mouse called. He wants his sorceror's hat back.

Thus begins a very long sequence in which Top Cat and the others try to catch Benny, only for him to keep bouncing off the trampoline they're holding and eventually land on a flagpole. Then he slides off the flagpole and lands on Officer Dibble. Then it's time for a party!

Snerdly (who names their kid that, anyway?) realizes that in order to get rid of Benny, they'll have to get Top Cat out of the picture first. But how? He'll have to use his secret weapon: some furry's DeviantArt OC!

You can tell she's a girl cat because she has hair. And a curvy figure, we can't forget
THAT.

So Snerdly calls up the glamorous Kitty Glitter (Teresa Ganzel) and convinces her to go out with Top Cat, claiming that he's one of the richest bachelors in town. You see, Kitty is what is known as a Gold Digger. Give Trixie some credit, at least she wasn't THAT.

To be fair, Kitty DOES need the money. She hasn't been doing well financially since
the Danger Rangers disbanded.

When Snerdly reveals to Top Cat that he's arranged for him to go out with Kitty, T.C. instantly forgets all about the whole "clearly trying to kill Benny" thing. But neither one counted on WHACKY SHENANIGANS ensuing, and this time they result in Kitty mistaking Brain for Top Cat. She takes him to a pet store... which sells mink coats for some reason? Do they skin whatever pets they don't sell?

I wonder if Brain finds it all strange that Kitty is wearing a wedding dress.

Eventually, Kitty gets a call from Snerdly informing her that she is NOT on a date with Top Cat but rather an "imposter". Enraged, she dumps soup on Brain's head. Back at the mansion, Snerdly suggests that the cats have a costume party to celebrate Benny getting the money. So Top Cat dresses as a pirate, Spook dresses as Cleopatra (another crossdressing joke), Fancy-Fancy dresses as a clown, Choo-Choo dresses as Napoleon, and Snerdly gives Benny a dog's head mask that looks like they chopped the head off a Pound Puppy.

"I've always wondered what it's like to have pupils instead of jut black dots for eyes!"

Brain returns, and when he sees Benny with the dog mask on, he thinks that a dog ate Benny. For some reason, it takes forever for Benny to take off the mask and reveal himself to Brain. And in case you're wondering what Snerdly's plan is now, he calls up the dog pound and tells the dogcatcher (Kenneth Mars) that there's a mongrel running around the mansion. Isn't he at all worried that they might take Rasputin too?

The party starts up, Brain dresses as a harem girl... that's THREE crossdressing jokes, somebody on the writing staff clearly thought that cats in womens' clothing was a riot... and T.C. meets up with Kitty. Then the cats do a rap song that summarizes the plot so far. It's pretty cringe-worthy, but still not as cringe-worthy as anything Jellystone! did with these characters.

While the cats are being hip and cool with the kids, yo, Snerdly gets Benny nabbed by the guy from the dog pound. The others go looking for him, eventually running into Officer Dibble, who tells them that he saw a dogcatcher's van drive off. They put two and two together. "Benny's been catnapped!" Choo-Choo exclaims. "And sneaky Snerdly set him up!" Top Cat adds. As for Benny, he's been put in a cell at the pound. It apparently hasn't occured to him to just take the mask off.

"Hey, T.C., aren't your vest adn hat usually purple? How come they're red all of
a sudden?"

The cats go to the pound, and T.C. tries to sneak in and free Benny, only to run into the guy who runs the pound and his doberman. Fortunatley, Benny somehow managed to climb into the air ducts (his cellmate told him about it - so apparently dogs can talk in this world, although they still don't wear clothes?) and he saves T.C., only for the guy to fill the air ducts with water. He's trying to drown them?! This guy's psychotic!

Fortunately, WHACKY SHENANIGANS result in the entire dog pound almost falling apart. In the chaos, T.C., Benny, and the dogs escape. "TALK ABOUT BEIN' IN THE DOGHOUSE! THEY'LL PAY FOR THIS!" Mr. Attempts to Drown Cats declares. The cats need to get back to the mansion ASAP, it's only fifteen minutes to midnight, but the dogcatcher's chasing after them in his vehicle might make that difficult. To get away, they hide in the car wash. The very same car wash where Amy works. Remember Amy? She's still in this movie. Benny identifies her, and she explains that she's been stuck working at the car wash thanks to her benefactor Snerdly. And then the dogcatcher shows up and is all "NOT SO FAST, PUNKS!".

I guess he's just going to ignore that Benny took the mask off, revealing that he is
not, in fact, a dog (why did it take Benny so long to take it off anyway?).

Amy defeats the evil dogcatcher by sending him through the car wash, and they get in the limo and drive back to the mansion... only to run out of gas halfway there. Gotta stretch out the runtime some more, I guess. And to make matters worse, the dogcatcher shows up again. Dude, just let it go. So how do they defeat him this time? They just run away. Okay, fine. Just get them back to the mansion so Snerdly won't get the money already.

After they run into a genuine Beverly Hills Cop - who, yes, sounds like Eddie Murphy - they make it back to the mansion with two minutes to spare. But Officer Dibble won't let them in. Why? Because Snerdly gave him strict orders not to let any animals, even the heir to the fortune, in. And despite Snerdly's being the most blatant villain ever, Dibble is going to obey. Fortunately, Dibble winds up falling asleep. Some security guard. Unfortunately, it's midnight, so even when the good guys from entering the house via the chimney, Snerdly claims that the money is his and Rasputin's. There's only one problem with that. Sid Buckman reveals that he's actually been Gertrude in disguise the whole time!

What a twist!

Yes, Gertrude knew that Snerdly was secretly evil and this was all just an elaborate scheme to get him to reveal his evilness. But he and Rasputin make a run for it while she's ranting about how evil he is, with Snerdly putting on the dog mask so no one will recognize him. As they're trying to sneak out, however, Dibble stops them because he thinks Snerdly is Benny. Y'know, even though Snerdly is much taller and dressed differently. But he lets them walk right by... for some reason... only for them to get nabbed by the dogcatcher and thrown into his vehicle. So Snerdly's going to the pound?

Nope. He and Rasputin manage to escape... and then run onto a movie set... and then the dogcatcher shows up and nabs them again. Meaning that there was no point in having them escape except to pad out the run time some more.

Top Cat and his gang head back to the alley, and Dibble rejoins the police force. Kitty shows up, finds out that T.C.'s not really rich, and rejects him. Amy pays them a visit, and we finally end the movie with another rap song.

Wow, those cats are totally tubular! Radical! Bodacious! Other 1980s slang!

What's the Verdict?

My apologies to Paul Sommer and Charles A. Nichols, but this movie is pretty weak. Even worse than the 2011 movie, in fact. The main problem is that it's tremendously dull and monotonous. This plot didn't need to be two hours long. Sequences are stretched out to absurd lengths (we didn't need, like, ten minutes of the bad guys getting captured by the dogcatcher, and then escaping, and then getting captured again). Very few of the jokes are funny. The new characters are boring non-entities, with the exception of Snerdly and Rasputin who are basically just duller versions of Dick Dastardly and Muttley. Plot points start up and then are forgotten about for the longest time. Also, for some reason, even though most of the original voices returned for this, a few characters sound a bit off. Top Cat sounds more like Jimmy Durante now, for one thing.

My suggestion? Just watch the original Top Cat show instead. I'd only recommend watching this if you're a HUGE Top Cat fan. Like, if he's your favorite Hanna-Barbera character. Between this and The Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose being mediocre, I'm honestly kind of nervous about reviewing the other Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 movies. Although I do remember finding The Good, the Bad, and the Huckleberry Hound and Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School alright, so there's that.

Let's Watch This: "Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose" (1987)

Hanna-Barbera, nowadays, seems to be looked down upon. People complain about the animation in their shows being lousy, their characters being annoying and one-note, things like that. The only Hanna-Barbera productions that really get much praise nowadays are their stuff from the 1990s - the stuff made for Cartoon Network.

Case in point - I recently criticized that new Jellystone! show (y'know, the one that cast celebrities as the voices of several characters and turned Squiddly Diddly into a stereotypical fashion-obsessed teenage girl for some reason) on Twitter, and I got a ton of hate tweets sent my way. Most of these claimed that Hanna-Barbera sucked anyways and that Jellystone! improved these characters by changing them. Yes, clearly turning Magilla Gorilla into Paul F. Thompkins makes him a much more complex character.

Me, on the other hand? I've always had a fondness for Hanna-Barbera's productions, especially their "Funny Animal" cartoons like Yogi Bear, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, and Quick-Draw McGraw. Sure, the animation wasn't very good, and they could get kind of corny, but I don't see just what's so horrible about these things. Fortunately, when I was younger, Boomerang actually AIRED these old cartoons for us children who weren't around in Hanna-Barbera's heyday to watch. Most of the "Funny Animal" cartoons were put in a block on Saturday mornings called "The Boomerang Zoo". Now, if you want to watch a Snagglepuss cartoon, you either have to buy The Yogi Bear Show on DVD or see if anybody's uploaded one to Dailymotion.

During the 1970s, Hanna-Barbera got an idea: what if they made productions that teamed all their "Funny Animal" characters up? Who WOULDN'T love to see Magilla Gorilla hanging out with Peter Potamus? Their first attempt at this was Yogi's Ark Lark, a 1972 TV special that I plan on reviewing at another time.

Then came a show called Yogi's Gang, in which Yogi and the others were still flying around in that ark... only for the hypothetical shenanigans that could occur with all these characters hanging out taking a backseat to the characters learning life lessons. So, like, one episode had Wally Gator learning that pranking people is bad, one episode had Snagglepuss, Quick-Draw and Wally learning not to trick people, one episode had Atom Ant teaching everyone about how being wasteful is wrong... stuff like that. Usually this involved some evil person obsessed with some negative trait (they had names like "Mr. Waste", "Mr. Hothead", "Mr. Fibber", stuff like that) and there was always at least one character - usually Boo-Boo - who was trying to get the others not to listen to this evil person from the start. There was just one very small problem with this - we watch Yogi Bear because we want to LAUGH, not because we want to learn life lessons.

This sort of thing went on, with Hanna-Barbera releasing things like this...

I'll be reviewing this another time, too.

And this...

Which also featured Scooby-Doo. And various characters from the multiple clones of
his show that Hanna-Barbera made.

And who could forget about THIS, even though we all want to?

No, I'm not going to be reviewing this. Enough people have already done reviews of it
for me to admit that I can't really say anything else about it that hasn't already been said.
It's the same reason I won't be reviewing Foodfight!.

Today, we'll be watching one of these "Hanna-Barbera Funny Animal Crossover" productions - a 1987 TV movie called Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose. Is it any good? Let's find out!

So, the movie begins with a musical number about Yogi (Daws Butler)'s "Holiday Jolly-Day Tour Bus". Boo-Boo (Don Messick), Huckleberry Hound (Daws Butler), Snagglepuss (Daws Butler), Quick-Draw McGraw (Daws Butler), Augie Doggie (Daws Butler) and Doggie Daddy (John Stephenson) are all going for a ride with Yogi to such places as "where the wild Giggles grow", "where snickers are bloomin' and belly-laughs boomin'" and the Grand Canyon. When did Yogi start up a tour bus company? I don't know, but who cares? Personally, I'm more curious as to why Magilla Gorilla and Wally Gator weren't invited.

Wait... that's not a bus, that's just a car. FALSE ADVERTISING!

Eventually, they arrive at their destination - the dome of the Spruce Goose. And they only got lost five times. "Four if you don't count Pismo Beach," Augie pipes up. "Believe me, son, Pismo Beach don't count!" Doggie Daddy replies. What does he mean by that? What exactly happened at Pismo Beach to make Doggie Daddy say something like that? I demand more information.

After roll call, they all head inside. The guy at the ticket booth warns Yogi that it's almost closing time, but Yogi's not worried - "This is the quicky-quicky tour!" he announces. "In and about, round and out! Hurry hurry hurry!" As they're walking in, Quick-Draw asks just what, exactly, the Spruce Goose is. Fortunately, a movie starts playing to answer his question. A movie with stock-footage, no less!

No, I didn't put Victory Thru Air Power on or whatever. This is from the
same movie.

The Spruce Goose, the movie explains, is the largest plane ever built. Also, it's made entirely of wood. So for those of you who didn't know anything about the Spruce Goose before reading this... don't thank me, thank the writers of this movie. Then the screen actually lifts up, allowing the gang to head inside and see the Spruce Goose for themselves.

No, seriously, what DID happen to the gang at Pismo Beach? Doggie Daddy's
"Pismo Beach don't count" comment is making me suspicious...

"It's fantastic! Stupendous! Bigger than a breadbox, even!" Snagglepuss exclaims upon seeing the Spruce Goose with his own eyes. Augie points out that they say its wings are longer than a football field. "That's amazin'! But who wants ta play football on da wing of an airplane? Especially when it's flyin'!" Doggie Daddy asks. Up the stairs to the plane they go.

Is it just me, or did Yogi's eyebrows suddenly become a bit bushier?

Climbing all those stairs makes Yogi eventually become exhausted - apparently, running away from parkgoers with the pic-a-nic baskets that he just swiped from them isn't enough to keep the bear in shape. Fortunately, he finds a shortcut - an entryway into the plane with a "OFF-LIMITS - DO NOT ENTER" sign standing in it. But Yogi doesn't give a crap about rules (especially that one about not feeding the bears, as any fan of Yogi Bear should already know), so they go through the entryway and into the plane.

"And remember, if we get in trouble for this, we're pinning the blame on
Hokey Wolf. He's not in this movie, so if we blame him, he's not going to
find out about it."

However, upon closing the door, they discover that it's pitch-black inside. Yogi tries to open the door and "shed a little light on this situation", but it's no use - they're locked in. Snagglepuss lights a match, then they all scream for help. Alas, nobody hears them, and just to add insult to injury, it's closing time. So even if Yogi and the others DO get out, they're still stuck in the dome... and without any food. Since this is a cartoon, I'm expecting Yogi to hallucinate that Boo-Boo is a ham and attempt to eat him.

Say, if the Spruce Goose is made entirely of wood, why does it look like
it's made of chrome? Is that just a result of the paint job, or is it the lighting,
or what?

Fortunately, Yogi has a backup plan...

Okay, I know that this is more likely than not a nitpick, but... where did
they get the ladder? I'm not complaining, just curious...

Augie, after Doggie Daddy points out that his feet don't touch the ground and ergo he probably won't be much help, accidentally opens a door and falls into... uh, the cargo area? I honestly have no idea what part of the plane this is.

What are those things on the bottom? Giant sausages? If so, I guess
we don't have to worry about Yogi getting hungry...

The gang's attempt to break down the door is a wash, but Augie tells them that he found a way out. So they try that way.

"Would now be a bad time to mention that I want a refund?"
"You're gonna have to wait until the end of the tour."

Eventually, they find a ladder and climb up it, only to find themselves in the control room. "I feel just like an astronaut!" Snagglepuss says. Yogi, of course, starts pushing random buttons in the hopes that one of them will open the door. You know where this is going, right?

"Which of these buttons turns on the seat-warmers?"

Yogi presses a button that causes a bunch of lights to turn on, then the propellers outside the plane manifest pixie dust and start whirling. And then the plane goes into motion.

Quick question, doesn't this place have any security guards? If so, didn't any of them see or hear the plane roaring to life and moving? And if they DID see or hear it, then why the heck aren't they doing anything?

And people say that Hanna-Barbera productions have bad animation.

"These are the best special effects I've ever seen!" Yogi exclaims as the plane leaves the dome. Some glowing dots appear out of nowhere and provide a "runway" of sorts. Yogi, of course, doesn't realize that he's actually started the Spruce Goose - he thinks that it's some sort of simulator or something. "It feels like we're really moving, doesn't it?" he asks. "It even LOOKS LIKE we're moving!"

I don't know why, but I love Yogi's expression here.

Also, did Boo-Boo suddenly become much larger?

"If it feels like it's moving, and it LOOKS LIKE we're moving, I've got a strange idea, Yogi... we're moving!" Boo-Boo tells him. "Ridiculous, Boob! It's just an optical illusion!" Yogi replies... just as they head straight for a bridge, but fortunately the plane fits under it. Then Yogi decides to get the others so that THEY can see what's going on. Boo-Boo points out to him that it's a bad idea because he's the pilot and must steer the plane, but Yogi doesn't believe that the controls really work, so off he goes.

As it turns out, the others are hiding. As he peeks out from behind a table, Huck asks, "Can we go home now?" Doggie Daddy and Snagglepuss are ticked-off that Yogi got them into this mess.

"Do you know how many people today have mistaken me for the Pink Panther?!
If it happens ONE MORE TIME, I'm going to snap! Go berserk! Freak-out, even!"

"Do I detect an undercurrent of dissatisfaction among the troops?" Yogi asks. "Dang it all, Yogi, we just wanna know what's goin' on!" Quick-Draw complains. Well, Quick-Draw, I can answer that question for you: Yogi set the plane into motion. And since he has no idea what he's doing, you're all in big, big trouble. Boo-Boo runs in and frantically tells Yogi that they're gonna crash into the bridge, which means that Yogi must take the controls.

Snagglepuss is so frightened that his eyebrows have flown off his face!

Fortunately, Yogi manages to get the plane airborne before Mr. Plane can meet Mr. Bridge... and then accidentally causes the plane to go into a nosedive and land back on the surface of the water. But then... oh, no! They're about to crash into a giant cruise ship!

"We can't destroy a Disney Cruise ship! Disney has all the lawyers!"

Then the Spruce Goose starts glowing with yellow fuzz and takes off into the sky. "It seems that this better-than-average bear is also your better-than-average flyboy!" Yogi boasts proudly. "Uh, flyBEAR!" Boo-Boo points out to Yogi that this isn't a simulator or whatever, Yogi's actually flying the plane - and he doesn't know HOW to fly the plane. Yogi shushes him and says, "YOU know it, and I know it, but don't tell the Spruce Goose!"

So the plane winds up in, um, outer space, and it winds up flying through a... spotlight?

This isn't going to turn into a prequel for that Yogi's Space Race show, is it?

The spotlight causes the ship to start glowing with (as Boo-Boo puts it) "stardust".

I wonder what Baba Looey is doing right now without Quick-Draw around.

Then Doggie Daddy points out the "Doggie Star"... which is not a star but rather a constellation in the shape of Huck's head.

"Hey, now, that there's an unauthorized use of my image."

And the Sagitarius constellation looks like Quick-Draw... as a centaur. Except that it's not a centaur, it's a horse with six legs. Uh...

"My nose isn't THAT big!"

In fact, all of the constellations look like Yogi and his friends. Snagglepuss is thrilled to be "finally up there in lights".

Hey, why doesn't Boo-Boo get a constellation?

And then things get weird. The plane flies through some clouds, and out of the clouds emerges... a satyr? Uh, okay...

Philoctetes before he let his appearance go to pot.

Next, a pegasus shows up...

When did we wind up in a Fantasia segment?

The constellations of Quick-Draw and Yogi try to lasso the pegasus, but they wind up lassoing a constellation of a bull... and the clouds turn red for some reason...

Hey, look, it's a literal Red Bull. And I just found out that Red Bull was introduced
the very same year that this movie aired. That's kind of amusing. Sort of. Not really.

Then... I don't even know what's going on right now.

I can't even think of a comment here.

After... whatever it was that we just watched, Snagglepuss and Quick-Draw start talking about how great Yogi's Holiday Jolly-Day Tour is. Then we cut to... get ready for this... aliens. Yes, aliens.

And they have Shrek ears.

The aliens talk in these Stitch/Marvin the Martian/Gizmo-esque voices (provided by Dave Coulier and Frank Welker) about how they're going to take over the Earth, but, I'm sorry, why are we watching aliens? I thought this was supposed to be about Yogi Bear and his friends flying around in the Spruce Goose. Where do aliens fit into this?! What, did one of the writers run into that pigeon from Bolt on the way to the studio?

Okay, so, the aliens disguise themselves as humans... green-skinned humans. One of them becomes... Napoleon?

Yeah, a green-skinned Cap'n Crunch. That's not gonna raise any suspicion.

And the other becomes... a caveman.

Uhhhhhhhhhh, maybe that disguise would work if you were planning on
invading BEDROCK...

Then the aliens' UFO get knocked off-course by the Spruce Goose. One of them suggests that they just invade New Jersey instead. Uh, I'm not sure that I get the joke there.

Okay, enough of the aliens, back to the actual movie. The gang hears on the radio that an ice storm has marooned a bunch of animals at the South Pole. They're landlocked and starving. So Yogi is all, "We'll save those animals!" and it's off to the South Pole for them!

Blah blah blah, insert some sort of E.T. joke here...

To get to the South Pole, Yogi decides to follow a flock of stoned-looking pelicans. After all, birds fly south in the winter... only for Boo-Boo to point out that there's one small problem with Yogi's thought process: birds fly south to WARMER CLIMATES in the winter.

"Dude... the colors..."
"Man, I'm so baked right now..."
"I'm so baked right now that I can hear smells... and I don't even know what that
means..."

Then Boo-Boo points out that they'll freeze in the South Pole. "We'll get sniffles, even!" Snagglepuss exclaims. But Yogi wants to help those trapped animals.

I know bringing realism into a movie with talking bears, dogs, horses, and mountain lions in it is kind of stupid, but why are there polar bears at the South Pole?

We get some WACKY SHENANIGANS involving turbulence, and at one point Quick-Draw threatens to shoot Yogi.

I'm sorry, but WHAT?! Quick-Draw threatening to shoot Yogi?! WHAT?! Call me crazy, but I don't think that's very in-character!

See? Even Yogi is shocked by this!

Eventually, they see a sign welcoming them to the South Pole.

Crud, now I'm craving a candy cane...

Then they all hear a banging noise. Huck peeks out to see what it is... and winds up frozen in a block of ice.

"I WAS FROZEN TODAY!"

"Well, look what we have here..." Quick-Draw says. "A frozen PUP-sicle!" Ha ha ha ha ha that's not funny.

"Yer joke is bad and you should feel bad!"

Quick-Draw manages to free Huck by shattering the ice with a hammer, then Huck tells the others that there's a baby pelican out there on the wing. And he's hurt! How will they save him? Well, Huck uses toilet plungers on his feet to walk out and save the bird, and they bandage its wing.

I know that's the pouch, but it looks like the pelican has a goatee.
It's also awfully big for a BABY pelican...

So after that little pointless detour, they're still hearing bumping noises... coming from the floor this time. As it turns out, there's a little girl on the plane too, and they're just now realizing it.

Did we take a wrong turn and wind up in a Peanuts special or something?

The kid, whose name is Bernice, is really abrasive and has an incredibly annoying voice that sounds like she either has a Brooklyn accent or is constipated. I can tell that this character is going to be super-endearing!

So what the heck is Bernice (voiced by Marilyn Schreffler) doing here? Well, she was on the Spruce Goose tour with her parents, got lost, and (in Huck's words) "made the same dumb mistake we did". But let's be honest here, she's really only here because otherwise this special won't have any female characters in it, and simply turning some of the pre-existing male characters female would be an incredibly stupid way to fix that problem (I'm sorry, but the Jellystone! jokes are writing themselves).

Anyway, they find the landlocked animals, and we get an animation error.

I know, I know, it's Hanna-Barbera, they're known for not having the best
animation, but I still couldn't help pointing this out.

Yogi's plan is to crack through the ice, freeing the animals that are cut off from the ocean. But as Huck points out, the ice is probably pretty thick. "If this is the plane that couldn't be built, it oughta do things that couldn't be done! Hey-hey-hey!" Yogi replies with a smile. So they try it, and it works!

Why am I suddenly reminded of the Ice Age movies?

Hooray, the animals are saved! But some of the penguins are trapped on an iceberg surrounded by sharks! Oh no! Fortunately, Bernice knows how they can save them... "But you probably wouldn't take an idea from a girl," she complains. Ah yes, I forgot to mention that Bernice is one of those "I am woman, hear me roar" characters. Were people in 1987 still thinking that girls weren't as good as boys or whatever?

By the way, I just Googled it, and apparently there aren't actually any sharks in Antarctica. But, again, I probably shouldn't bring realism into a movie with talking bears in it.

I like how they're all circling the island in unison like that. Do you think
they rehearsed this?

"I'm an open-minded bear," Yogi says, so they try Bernice's idea - flying next to the iceberg and letting the penguins climb onto the wing of the plane.

Huh, Hanna-Barbera did March of the Penguins before March of the Penguins.
Who would've thunk?

It works, but we have to keep dragging the scene out, so then Bernice slips off the wing and winds up clinging to a propeller dangling over the sharks. "This is becomin' another remake of JAWS!" she snaps, sparing me from having to make a JAWS reference myself. Yogi saves her, but winds up dangling over the sharks himself. His head also spins around a few times like that kid from The Exorcist.

Jabberjaw was pretty ticked-off that HE wasn't invited on the Holiday
Jolly-Day Tours...

Long story short, Quick-Draw and Snagglepuss are able to save Yogi, but thanks to Snagglepuss' pressing buttons and Yogi's holding off going back in so that he can taunt the sharks, Yogi, Quick-Draw, and Bernice wind up on an iceberg in the water with the sharks coming towards them. Thankfully, they're saved by a whale.

"Ever seen Pinocchio, punks?!"

After that, they take off in the Spruce Goose and then... oy, it's back to the aliens. Blah-blah-blah, they want to take over the world, they're idiots, go away you stupid aliens.

Over the radio, the gang hears that an ocean liner full of animals is adrift in the Zelman Sea... a place that I couldn't find any information on when I Googled it, so I'm assuming that Hanna-Barbera made it up (if it actually does exist, please let me know). The criminal poachers that trapped the animals have abandoned them on the boat... for some reason. But Yogi and his friends aren't gonna stand for that - after all, they're animals themselves - so it's off to the Zelman Sea!

Alas, they wind up getting lost. Fortunately, with the help of some pixie dust and Yogi's finger (don't ask), they're able to locate the Zelman Sea. And then... oh for the love of... the aliens are back.

You know what? I'm not even going to provide context for this screencap.

Okay, back to Yogi and his friends. They've located the ocean liner and the animals on board.

You ever wonder why, in the Hanna-Barbera world, some animals
are anthropomorphic and others aren't? Does Snagglepuss ever get
weird looks from the other, non-anthropomorphic lions?

Then, ugh, back to the aliens. They get sent off-course by the Spruce Goose again. Nyuck nyuck nyuck. Side note, boy, is this movie long. Why are so many of the movies that I review so long?

The aliens bug off, and it's time for Yogi's gang to rescue some animals. Doggie Daddy briefly turns into a larger version of his son (not that he didn't ALREADY look like a larger version of his son, but still...), and as it turns out Yogi doesn't have a plan. Fortunately, he gets the idea to tow the the ship to... somewhere. But then the ship breaks open and starts to sink. "This is a job for El Kabong!" Quick-Draw announces before dressing up as El Kabong and swinging over to the ship. He tells everybody to go to the back of the boat. Wait, he needed to become El Kabong just for THAT?

Well, now the boat's not going to sink. Hooray! Oh, wait, never mind. It's still gonna sink. Fortunately, Bernice has found the answer - they can just open the front doors and load the animals into the Spruce Goose. There's just one problem... there aren't any front doors. D'oh. But Yogi has an idea: "What the mind of man can conceive, the mind of a better-than-average bear can conceive!" he says. This leads to a pretty funny exchange between Snagglepuss and Boo-Boo. Snagglepuss says, "Huh? What did he say? What did he say?" Boo-Boo's response is, "I think this is where he gets us to clap for Tinker Bell."

Boo-Boo's statement turns out to be pretty accurate - Yogi tells everyone, and the audience, to clap their hands if they believe in cargo doors. This causes cargo doors to suddenly appear. Hooray for Deus Ex Machinas!

Good thing that ship is taking its sweet time sinking.

Good thing that ship is taking its sweet time sinking.

The animals all come aboard the Spruce Goose. "It's a regular Yogi's Ark!" Doggie Daddy explains. Don't worry, Doggie Daddy, I'll be reviewing THAT another time. We get a gag where Snagglepuss and Huck are startled by a pair of alligators... even though they're friends with an alligator. Wally Gator. They've interacted with him in a few different productions before this. I know he's not in this movie, but he still exists. Just sayin'.

So the Spruce Goose takes off, and Yogi announces that they're gonna return the animals to their natural habitats... or, rather, the nearest land.

Everybody knows that tropical islands are the natural habitat of alligators.

The animals are all let free, Quick-Draw parts with an elephant that he apparently hooked up with at some point (I don't know either), and little do the gang know that they're being watched. A pair of eyes peers out of a nearby bush. Su-SPI-cous!

Boo-Boo then points out to Yogi that the name of the island isn't "HELP" as Yogi suggests - their noticing the word "HELP" written into the sand probably means that there's somebody else on the island that needs their help. Yogi suggests that they form a search party and find whoever it is that needs their help. And indeed, they're not alone on the island... the ones who need to be saved are none other than Dick Dastardly and Muttley!

Well, okay, it's not actually Dick Dastardly and Muttley... maybe I should explain. You see, at the time apparently Hanna-Barbera didn't have complete ownership of Dastardly and Muttley, so when they wanted to make a Muttley show in 1976 they had to create a Muttley clone called "Mumbly" and then, when they wanted to have Dastardly and Muttley appear in Laff-a-Lympics, they had to have Mumbly and a Dastardly clone called the "Dread Baron" in the show instead. I guess they wanted to use Dastardly and Muttley here, too, but they couldn't so instead they just threw the Dread Baron and Mumbly in here*. The Baron's even voiced here by Dastardly's voice actor, Paul Winchell, using the exact same voice he used for Dastardly (Don Messick, Muttley's voice actor, does Mumbly here too, but he's always voiced Mumbly so...). Maybe they were hoping kids would assume they were the same characters?

Anyway, Dastardly and Muttley (yeah, that's what I'm calling them. They're just Dastardly and Muttley with different names, so to heck with it, I'm calling them Dastardly and Muttley) have been stranded on the island for a while now. Muttley tells Dastardly (in perfect English, which does make for an amusing gag) that there's a rather large plane on the beach. Upon noticing that the plane is the Spruce Goose, Dastardly announces that he's not just saved, he's RICH! But then he sees Yogi and his friends... apparently they've met before (presumably on Laff-a-Lympics), and they all know that he's "a stinker", so chances are they won't help them. But then Dastardly notices the kid with them, and he starts concocting a plan...

The plan, as it turns out, is to win the gang over by saving Bernice when she gets stuck in quicksand. Doesn't work - they get Bernice out, but Yogi still doesn't trust Dastardly... so they'll be democratic and vote on it.

Once Yogi tallies up all the votes, it's a tie - eight votes "No" and eight votes "Yes". "But there's only ten of us here. How can there be sixteen votes?" Huck points out. Yeah, how can there be? We don't get an answer. However, Yogi decides to change his vote and trust Dastardly - after all, he tried to save Bernice, and he DOES know how to fly an airplane, which should come in handy. But the others decide to have a mutiny. Then Yogi asks, hey, what if Dastardly promises to reform? THEN will the others trust him? And he can prove it by returning a bird's egg to its nest... which is all the way on the top of a giant anthill.

I've heard of making a mountain out of a molehill, but this is ridiculous!

Wacky shenanigans ensue as Dastardly and Muttley try to return the egg to its nest. For example, they come across this purple lizard.

Is that a crocodile or an alligator or a giant monitor lizard or WHAT?

After more padding, they're able to return the egg to its nest. "Well, I'll be an uncle's monkey! He did it!" Yogi exclaims. A deal's a deal, so Yogi and the gang decide to trust Dastardly and Muttley and let them go with them on the plane. But Dastardly, of course, plans to double-cross them - and then going to a place called "Moolah-Moolah".

After they take off, Dastardly asks Yogi if he can thank him and his crew with "a little surprise". Yogi agrees, and we see Dastardly and Muttley preparing dinner for them while Dastardly reminds the audience that he's going to double-cross Yogi. Long story short, the surprise party/trap goes off without a hitch, they all sing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow", and Dastardly locks them in, then proceeds to brag over the intercom that they're now his prisoners. Yogi then says, "If anybody says 'I told you so', I'm gonna get very upset!"

Now, that's pretty funny, but then he says, "Whatever you do, don't say 'I told you so'!", and then the others do indeed say "We told you so!", which makes the line less funny. They dragged the joke out. Anyway, Quick-Draw is suddenly dressed as El Kabong again. He winds up breaking the intercom, and they all try to think of a way to get outta there. Alas, nobody has any ideas.

Eventually, Dastardly lands the plane... on the very same island that they just left. Wow. Fail.

Dastardly kind of sucks as a navigator.

Muttley then falls out of the plane and finds some natives worshiping a giant stone statue that resembles Dastardly.

And Dastardly never saw the giant statue before BECAAAAAAAAAAAUSE?
Maybe this is actually a different island, I don't know...

So of course the natives believe that Dastardly is their king or whatever, and he's going to milk it for all its worth. While the natives are loading gold into the plane, Yogi gets one's attention by banging on the door, and they get out.

I don't know why, but I find the design of these natives offensive.

Yogi and the others make a run for it, and they all jump out of the plane and run into Dastardly. "The game is up, Dread Baron!" Yogi snaps, but Dastardly has backup - the natives! "Lock them up and throw away the key!" Dastardly shouts, and the natives force the gang into a straw hut. Snagglepuss suggests they try brute strength to get out of there, only to earn dumbfounded looks from the others. I dunno, Yogi might not have much in the way of muscles but he's still a BEAR. I think he could hypothetically tear the walls of the hut in two. Then Yogi suggests that they try brains AND brawn, and are able to lift up the hut and walk off in it. This is why straw huts make crappy prisons.

But Dastardly has a backup plan - let Yogi and his friends fall into a big hole filled with alligators! It works, but they still make it out okay. Sometimes it pays to be a cartoon character. But then there's an earthquake - an earthquake caused by an erupting volcano! Yogi and his friends make a run for the plane, Dastardly's giant statue is destroyed, and the natives turn on Dastardly. And then... oh good lord, not the aliens again!

Guess what happens next. No really, guess.

You're right! As the gang - and Dastardly and Muttley, who they decided to let come with them out of the kindness of their hearts - flies off, they wind up knocking the aliens off-course again. But the plane is too heavy, so Dastardly suggests that they lighten the load and throw out anything useless. Quick-Draw then says, "Okay, we'll start with YOU!"

Dang. Quick-Draw McGraw just burned somebody. I did not expect THAT to happen. I mean, I am by no means COMPLAINING, but still...

So anyway, Dastardly throws out a bunch of chairs and Muttley, but Muttley uses his tail to fly back in. Yogi and Quick-Draw decide to throw out the gold, which obviously makes Dastardly freak out and jump out of the plane like an idiot... also, Muttley stole his parachute. As Yogi and the gang fly off, Muttley becomes the king of the natives, with Dastardly as his servant.

Yogi and the gang arrive back at the Spruce Goose dome. Boo-Boo asks how they're gonna land the plane in there. Yogi's response? The exact same way they took off.

Don't look at me, Boo-Boo. I'm just as confused as you are.

They land the plane, and as it turns out there ARE guards at this place as one of them kicks Yogi and his friends out. Bernice's mother finds her offscreen. Yogi and his gang are heroes. "Let's hear it for the Sprucey Goosey!" Yogi announces, and we end with a reprise of the "Holiday Jolly-Day Tour Bus" song.

What's the Verdict?

Well, that was... meh. Not good, not bad, just meh. It has it's problems... Bernice is annoying and pointless, for one. It's unbelievably long. There's a lot of padding, scenes are unnecessarily dragged-out. And what, exactly, was the purpose of having aliens in this movie? But there isn't anything awful or offensive about it, and it's admittedly carried by the charm that all of these Hanna-Barbera characters have. This movie would be much worse if it didn't have Quick-Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound in it. Would I recommend watching it? Uh, if you're a fan of Yogi Bear, maybe.

And hey, if nothing else, I would still much rather watch this than Jellystone!.

* And yet, they COULD use Dastardly and Muttley in that Yogi's Treasure Hunt show, which came out two years prior to this movie.