Yabba-Dabba--Oh, Let’s Just Forget It

They say it took 32 scriptwriters to yabba-dabba-dredge-up a plot for “The Flintstones: The Movie.” But that’s a mere yabba-dabba-decimal when compared to the number of newspaper and magazine headline writers who looked under “D” in their yabba-dabba-dictionaries, searching for that perfectly yabba-dabba-dreadful play on words to announce the movie’s yabba-dabba-debut.

Here, a sampling from across our fair yabba-dabba-democracy:

* “Yabba-dabba-do! For rock-solid family values” (Boston Herald)

* “Yabba-dabba-don’t! ‘Flintstones’ hits rock bottom” (USA Today)

* “A yabba-dabba-dud” (New York Daily News; with the sidebar: “Yabba-dabba-doodads aplenty.”)

* “Yabba-dabba-do see this film” (Middlesex (Mass.) News)

* “Yabba-dabba-don’t see this movie” (Bangor (Maine) Daily News)

* “Yabba-dabba-dull” (Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Journal)

* “Yabba-dabba-dumb” (Boston Globe)

* “Yabba-dabba-doo-doo” (Rolling Stone)

* “Flintstones get their yabba-dabba-due” (Entertainment Weekly) (followed by a box-office report the next week headlined “Yabba-dabba-doozy”)

* “Yabba-dabba-duck this one/That’s ‘Duck’--as in ‘Howard, The . . .”’) Tab Newspapers (Mass.)

* “Yabba-dabba-dough” (Hollywood Reporter, on the film’s spectacular first-weekend box office)