REVIEW: Scoob!

The choice to move Warner Bros' Scoob!, directed by Tony Cervone, to digital is an understandable one, but the film remains haunted by the possibility of having been the launching pad that brought Mystery Inc back into the public eye through the big screen. In an alternate timeline where theater doors weren't shuttered, could this have worked? Very possibly. Not short on laughs or ingenuity, this film places Scooby-Doo and company in a new universe that has every opportunity to initiate a new generation into the longstanding Scooby-Doo fandom.

Having deployed their mystery-solving expertise for fifty years (in the film's universe only ten years), the Mystery Inc. gang is considering expanding their business into the larger market and going big. But doing so runs the risk of losing their tight-knit posse. Does the group need to sacrifice friendship on the altar of inevitable maturation? The question hangs in the air as Scooby and Shaggy are caught in the crossfire of superhero Blue Falcon (well, Blue Falcon's son, Brian) and the notorious Dick Dastardly, who seeks Scooby-Doo for reasons unknown. Fred, Daphne, and Velma soon embark on a quest to save their friends, while Scooby and Shaggy try to understand how they fit into this larger than life world of robots and superheroes (and by extension the world of Mystery Inc), and the team must figure out just how strong their friendship is.

The movie actually shows impressive thematic symmetry in that regard. This dichotomy, the naturality of friendship versus the cold hard utility of progress, is at work in some form among most of the major players in the movie, including Dick Dastardly who now commands an army of robotic servants to take the place of his own flesh-and-blood canine sidekick whom he now seeks to retrieve from the Underworld. As a consequence, the thematic through-line of the film rings true. (There's an inescapable irony at play, though. The film does, after all, capitulate to modern computer animation instead of the hand-drawn tradition from which these characters originate.)

Voice actor extraordinaire Frank Welker (who fun-fact voiced Fred in the original 1969 run of Scooby-Doo and has voiced the big canine himself since 2002) gives life to our signature pup, while the rest of the cast is filled with prominent A-list actors including Zac Efron, Amanda Seyfried, and Ken Jeong. This is done to pretty good effect as you're never really distracted by the celebrity behind the mic. Jason Isaacs in particular relishes his role as supervillain Dick Dastardly and I'm now convinced this is how he should have played Lucius Malfoy.

One of the biggest deviations from the source material comes with a genre shift. Here the Mystery Inc. gang isn't caught up in a mystery that needs to be solved so much as a world domination quest that needs to be foiled. The movie actually gets to dip into a range of exotic locales and sub-genres. Perhaps what we see here isn't so far out of their range. After all, between their various films and shows over the decades, we've seen them take on haunted houses, pirates, dinosaurs, and everything in between. There's still an unmasking at the end, but it's done more as a meta-textual gimmick than anything else.

It's here that the film handicaps itself the most. Even in a world as cartoonish as this, even with a cast as zany as the Mystery Inc. Gang, one does wish that the writers for this team had had enough faith in the emotional gravity of the property to play a few of the more emotional moments sincerely rather than ironically. Thankfully the movie isn't without pathos, but the film elects to lean into irony a little too hard a little too often.

The movie is at its best when the personalities of the characters, and our affection for said personalities, are allowed to shine through. Does one need to be familiar with these personalities to understand this movie? It may increase your appreciation for the brand, but the film is fairly user-friendly. Just YouTubing the 1969 opening title sequence is more than sufficient. (This film may or may not include a form of that very feature for your convenience.) This is as good an entry point as any. Should we be graced with further franchising from this creative team, the Scooby Doo world may rest comfortably in the arms of pop culture for many years more.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: ELIO

Here's a fact: the term "flying saucer" predates the term "UFO." The United States Air Force found the former description too limiting to describe the variety of potential aerial phenomena that might arise when discussing the possibility of life beyond earth. There may have to be a similar expansion of vocabulary within the alien lexicon with Pixar's latest film, Elio , turning the idea of an alien abduction into every kid's dream come true. The titular Elio is a displaced kid who recently moved in with his aunt after his parents died. She doesn't seem to understand him any better than his peers do. He can't imagine a place on planet earth where he feels he fits in. What's a kid to do except send a distress cry out into the great, big void of outer space? But m iracle of miracles: his cries into the universe are heard, and a band of benevolent aliens adopt him into their "communiverse" as the honorary ambassador o...

JAWS: The Father of All Blockbusters Turns 50

The saga of Hollywood lives and dies on the ripples of a thousand different choices. Hundreds of movies each year from hundreds of artists serving hundreds of markets creates a complex, interconnected ecosystem that can never really be explored in its totality. Still, if there was one film, one moment, that trampolined Hollywood from one era into the next, it was in 1975 with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws . Moviegoing had naturally been a part of the global industry since moving pictures stole everyone’s attention at the start of the century. Tentpole films were also very much a part of the program. But the treatment of movies like The Sound of Music and Ben-Hur was done with an eye for prestige, more comparable to how Oscar hopefuls handle things today. Theaters at this time were still generally accustomed to having sporadic releases across the country over a period of several weeks. Limited roadshow releases were how you signaled that a movie’s importanc...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

Recall with me, if you will, the scene in Hollywood December 2016. We were less than a year away from #MeToo, and the internet was keenly aware of Hollywood’s suffocating influence on its females on and off screen but not yet sure what to do about it. Enter Morten Tyldum’s film Passengers , a movie which, despite featuring the two hottest stars in Hollywood at the apex of their fame, was mangled by internet critics immediately after take-off. A key piece of Passengers ’ plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who prematurely awakens from a century-long hibernation and faces a lifetime of solitude adrift in outer space; rather than suffer through a life of loneliness, he eventually decides to deliberately awaken another passenger, Aurora Lane, condemning her to his same fate. So this is obviously a film with a moral dilemma at its center. Morten Tyldum, direc...

REVIEW: The Legend of Ochi

This decade has seen a renaissance of movies claiming to be "this generation's ET ," but you probably can't remember their names any better than I can. We could have all sorts of debates why it is no one seems to know how to access that these days, though I don't think for a moment that it's because 2020s America is actually beyond considering what it means to touch that childhood innocence. But A24's newest film, The Legend of Ochi , does have me thinking this mental block is mostly self-inflicted by a world whose extoling of childhood is more driven by a dislike of the older generation than anything else. Fitting together narratives like How to Train Your Dragon with Fiddler on the Roof and tossing it in the sock drawer with 1980s dark fantasy, The Legend of Ochi is intermittently enchanting, but it's undermined by its own cynicism. On an island stepped out of time, a secluded community wages war against the local population of ...

REVIEW: Lilo & Stitch

By now the system errors of Disney's live-action remake matrix are well codified. These outputs tend to have pacing that feels like it was okayed by a chain store manager trying to lower the quarterly statement. They also show weird deference to very specific gags from their animated source yet don't bother to ask whether they fit well in the photorealistic world of live-action. And combing through the screenplay, you always seem to get snagged on certain lines of dialogue that someone must have thought belonged in a children's movie ("Being gross is against galactic regulation!). These are all present in this summer's live-action reinvention of "Lilo & Stitch." But mercifully, this remake allows itself to go off-script here and there. The result may be one of the stronger Disney remakes ... whatever that's worth. The 2002 animated masterpiece by Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders (who voices the little blue alien in bo...

REVIEW: Jurassic World - Rebirth

I had a mixed reaction to Jurassic World: Rebirth, but it did make for one of the most enjoyable theater experiences I've had in recent memory. I have to imagine that a part of this is because my most common theater appointments are matinee screenings, but I had the opportunity to see this one at a fairly well-attended midnight screening. And there's nary a film more tailored for surround-sound roaring and screens wide enough to contain these de-extinct creatures. ("Objects on the screen feel closer than they appear.") It was natural for me to cap the experience by applauding as the credits stared to roll, even if, as usual, I was the only one in the auditorium to do so. Yes, I am that kind of moviegoer; yes, I enjoyed the experience that much, and I imagine I will revisit it across time. That's not to imagine the movie is beyond reproach, but for I suppose it bears mentioning that, generally , th...

REVIEW: Materialists

In seminal romantic comedies or dramas, the mark of great writing was in artfully burying the lovebirds' insecurities and hangups in artifice. Pretense. The lovebirds didn't know how to honestly approach their own feelings at first. The distortion revealed the personality of both the situation and the relationship. What's more, it was just fun. The film would slowly thaw this facade until Cary Grant and Irene Dunne finally had, what Materialists calls, the ugliest parts of themselves laid bare for one another. Only then were they ready to embrace. Yet with Materialists , out this weekend, even in moments when the situation calls for vulnerability, the characters are oddly empirical and clinical with describing the things about them that they are ashamed of. These players might as well be performing a passionate reading of a Walmart receipt. Yes, Materialists is very obviously about the transactionality of the dating scene, but the movie ...

You're Not Stupid for Loving Jurassic World

I had an experience in the comment section of a YouTube video essay back in 2018 . This was around the release of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and the essay traced out how the original Jurassic Park developed its character arcs. I thought it was a nice analysis, and many of the comments seemed to agree. But I inevitably came across one comment lamenting how far the "Jurassic" franchise had fallen and how the new "Jurassic World" films just didn't care about things like character arcs anymore. I did a foolish thing and replied to this comment with my honest opinion, that being ... the JW films actually took a very similar approach to their character arcs, and arguments to the contrary weren’t giving the new films proper credit. One person replied directly to my comment, countering my point with “HAAHAHAHAAHA.” And, well, I just couldn’t argue with that … The Jurassic World movies are especially vulnerable to a certa...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Do Clementine and Joel Stay Together or Not?

Maybe. The answer is maybe. Not wanting to be that guy who teases a definitive answer to a difficult question and forces you to read a ten-page essay only to cop-out with a non-committal excuse of an answer, I’m telling you up and front the answer is maybe. Though nations have long warred over this matter of great importance, the film itself does not answer once and for all whether or not Joel Barrish and Clementine Krychinzki find lasting happiness together at conclusion of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Min d. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether Joel and Clementine’s love will last until the stars turn cold or just through the weekend. This essay cannot do that. What this essay can do is explore the in-text evidence the film gives for either side t...

Nights of Cabiria: What IS Cinema?

So here’s some light table talk … what is cinema? What is it for ? On the one hand, film is the perfect medium to capture life as it really is. With the roll of the camera, you can do what painters and sculptors had been trying to do for centuries and record the sights and sounds of a place exactly as they are. On the other hand, film is the perfect medium for dreaming. Is there any other place besides the movies where the human heart is so unfettered, so open to fantasy? If you’ve studied film formally, this is probably one of the first discussions you had in your Intro to Film theory course, in a class that may have forced you to read about Dziga Vertov and his theory about film and the Kino-eye (another day, another day …) In some ways, we could use basically any of thousands of cinematic works to jumpstart this discussion, but I have a particular film in mind. The lens I want to explore this idea through today is not only a...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog