The main problem here is the format. Yogi Bear cartoons were (IIRC) 5 minutes long, had minimal story lines and involved a lot of looped and repeated footage. They worked for the time and for what they were. When Hanna Barbera started making longer Yogi Bear stories, they started to fall flat as they had to develop the characters, expand their universe and introduce other characters to fill the voids. For me, they just didn’t work - the stories were always somewhat cutsie, and not the same kind of one gag punchline driven stories of the past. I really shudder to think how they are going top eeek this out for a movie length outing.
HKP was, IIRC, two stories in a 20 minute time slot - so 10 minutes a piece (keeping a line with 20 minutes = 30 minutes of air time with adverts in the USA). Both stories were linked in some way, which meant that you could argue that you had a 20 minute outing with two crimes to solve (also, two references to the “Hong Kong Book of Kung Foo”). Again, HKP worked in this setting because it was just meant to be that long.
In both examples, I really can’t imagine the depths of tedium they’ll reach with either of these.
Yogi’s first outing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g8FLSGRYW0HKP Intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW54W9y6-eUIs Scatman Cruthers still around?
