Scooby-Doo (*)
review by Jon Waterman

Scooby and his human companions head off to Spooky Island, a themed Spring Break resort, to investigate the mystery of why the college kids are leaving so dull and lifeless.

Here we go.  A lucrative cartoon franchise gets turned into a live action big budget film.  Sigh.  I’ll come right out and say it, the film never should have been made.  The cartoons still work and are still profitable.  This film is tainting the cartoon image.

On it’s own, without knowing about the cartoon, the film would be a huge disaster.  No one would know what the hell (can I say that when reviewing a kids movie?) is going on.  We’re thrown into the picture with assumed knowledge of the characters, their motivations and attributes and their background.  Granted, this is a damn safe assumption.  However, I think a more interesting movie might be about how the group formed and became the pop-culture icons that they are from the start.  But, hey, I’m not the writer.

Who is the writer?  Why none other than James Gunn.  Who is the writer?  He’s the guy who wrote that other family film “Tromeo and Juliet.”  Dreams can come true, kids.  Don’t do drugs and stay in school.  He should go back to Troma.

All the commercials go out of their way to tell you the director’s name, so I won’t mention him for fear of inflating his ego even more.  I don’t want him to think he actually should have such a high-profile career.  I’ll just tell you he’s directed “Home Alone 3,” “Never Been Kissed,” “Big Momma’s House” and he’s spent most of his time in Hollywood as an editor on such classics as “Teen Wolf Too.”  Yeah…I know.

I’ll tell you something.  I’ll excuse the transparent plot, because it’s a cartoon movie.  On top of that, it’s a Scooby-Doo movie.  It’s okay.  I’ll also excuse Scooby being computer generated.  This is one time when the cartoon-y look and feel of the CGI is exactly what is called for by the situation.  It makes sense, I’m letting it slide.  But I’m not going to excuse the acting.

They act too much.  Plain and simple, tone it down.  Take that emotion out of it.  If you want it to be like a cartoon, tone it down.  Too many different recognizable emotions are displayed.  How many ways do I have to say it?  The voices are fine.  Fred sounded like Freddy, but it’s tough to find that voice quality in today’s young actors.  Daphne sounded like Sarah but it’s closer to Daphne than you might think (and again tough to find that quality in a younger girl).  Velma was good.  Linda Cardellini (the unknown cast member) let it slip a bit, but got it right most of the time. Then there’s Shaggy.  This is probably the best we can hope for.  Pretty well dead on impression.  Although, come to think of it, I don’t think I remember him saying “Zoinks!” in the whole picture.  What’s that about?  Velma said “jinkies” twice, I believe, once in a horrible pun that should have been cut.

And another thing, Shaggy should not have been made the backbone of this group.  He actually is made the leader in a sense and is definitely the main focus of the picture.  The characterization as we know it is not exactly all there.  We don’t see Shaggy and Scooby eating enough.  And you know what?  They hardly show their cowardly side.  I thought that was the key to understanding who they are.  The rest of the gang are pretty much true to form.  Fred is a little more arrogant than usual.  Velma is the brain who takes too long to make the realizations.  Daphne is the eye-candy.

I wanted to write a one-word review of this movie:  “bleh.”  It’s not funny.  I chuckled a couple times, but that’s it.  No knee-slapping.  No guffaws.  No snorts.  I just couldn’t get into it.  I wanted something else.  I wanted more of a play on the Scooby culture and I don’t think I got it.  I was disappointed.  The kids will love it, I guess.  The crowd I was with was pretty silent most of the time.  They were probably looking at their watches, too.

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