Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

REVIEW: The Wild Robot

     I think I must have known that Chris Sanders had another movie on deck, but I guess I had forgotten it was coming out so soon. For whatever reason, when I saw his name at the end of the credits for The Wild Robot , out this weekend, I was caught off guard ... and then realized that it actually explained a lot. The basic premise felt broadly reminiscent of Lilo & Stitch , and there was at least one sequence that definitely recalled How to Train Your Dragon , both of which Sanders co-directed with Dean Deblois (executive producer on this film). With his latest offering for Dreamworks, Sanders cements his position as a titan in the world of animation.     The movie sees ROZ, a shipwrecked robot stranded on an island completely untouched by humans. One would think that such an Eden would be bereft of the squabbles that humans seem so happy to create, but the animals of the island revile this new intruder and put up every fence they have. The only thing on this rock that doesn'

REVIEW: Scream

     Stop me if you've heard this before about slasher films, in or out of the Scream franchise:       "Don't overthink it. It's just a scary movie."       What an insulting thought for anyone who's ever found themselves in the throes of a gripping horror film. Good slasher films, like the original Scream , look honestly at the thing that scares us most and gives it a face. They know that the point of the slasher isn't in the chasing or the stabbing, but the unmasking. The overcoming of the thing that scares you. Good slasher films "overthink" it.     I'm grateful to report that the directors of the newest Scream film,  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, not only understand this principle, they embrace it wholly. In doing so, they may have created a sequel that not only meets but surpasses the film it tries to emulate.     Twenty-five years after Sidney Prescott's first encounter with Ghostface, we meet Sam Carpenter, a native of

Children of a Lesser God: Between Sound and Silence

Loyal readers may remember last month when I talked about Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue and how I casually alluded to the larger framework of disability within film and promised to talk about it one day. Well, this isn’t like with my Disney Princess series where I teased the project for years before finally getting to it. I’m making good on that promise here today. You’re welcome.  Now, when I say “disability within film,” that’s a really large slice of the pie. The discussion of disability in Hollywood is a vast and complex field of study. There’s obviously overlap across the broader discussion, but people of different disabilities experience ableism differently, similar to how members of different ethnic identities experience racism differently, and it’s a machine that has to be dismantled on multiple fronts.  But with this piece, I’m not so interested in airing all the ways the industry has let down members of these communities. Today, I’d mostly li

Are We in Another Golden Age of Musicals?

  In early 2017, Variety ran a piece titled “ Will Musicals See a ‘La La Land’ Boost ?” alongside said movie’s victory lap around the box office and critics at large. Justin Paul, who wrote the music for La La Land alongside his partner, Benj Pasek, was optimistic about the doors his movie was opening: “I have to believe that other studios, other producers, would only be encouraged by the impact of ‘La La Land,’ both critically and at the box office.” Their agent, Richard Kraft, shared a similar sentiment. “I think people are growing tired of snark and skepticism and pessimism. [La La Land] hit the zeitgeist for smart and unapologetic optimism. Even in times of strife and conflict, people still fall in love and follow dreams.”  These are the kinds of statements that don’t go unnoticed by a musical nerd who chose to write his semesterly report on Meet Me in St. Louis when all his fellow film students wrote on Woody Allen. Classical musicals had always just been that gateway into c

American Beauty is Bad for your Soul

  The 1990s was a relatively stable period of time in American history. We weren’t scared of the communists or the nuclear bomb, and social unrest for the most part took the decade off. The white-picket fence ideal was as accessible as it had ever been for most Americans. Domesticity was commonplace, mundane even, and we had time to think about things like the superficiality of modern living. It's in an environment like this that a movie like Sam Mendes' 1999 film American Beauty can not only be made but also find overwhelming success. In 1999 this film was praised for its bold and honest insight into American suburban life. The Detroit News Film Critic called this film “a rare and felicitous movie that brings together a writer, director and company perfectly matched in intelligence and sense of purpose” and Variety hailed it as “a real American original.” The film premiered to only a select number of screens, but upon its smashing success was upgraded to

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 to help you, the reader, understand the mechanics, merits, and blindspots of either interpretation of the ending. It can also reveal the underlying assumptions of either

REVIEW: A Quiet Place - DAY ONE

I remember back when I reviewed A Quiet Place Part II , the thing that was on my mind a world crawling out of a global pandemic.  I now dive into Michael Sarnoski's newest take on the mythology with A Quiet Place: Day One having just this morning heard the news that a certain convicted felon is being granted immunity for his involvement in trying to overthrow democracy, and I am left wondering (not for the first time) what surviving in a world that already balances on borrowed time even means. This is more or less the mindset of the film's protagonist, Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who was already done with existing well before killer aliens started dropping out from the sky. The only things she cares about in the world are her "emotional support" cat, Frodo, and getting a taste of some proper New York pizza before this cancer takes her, alien invasion or not! While the rest of the city is running off to catch the last boat off Manhattan, she just digs deeper

REVIEW: Cyrano

    The modern push for the movie musical tends to favor a modern sound--songs with undertones of rap or rock. It must have taken director Joe Wright a special kind of tenacity, then, to throw his heart and soul into a musical project (itself a bold undertaking) that surrenders to pure classicalism with his new film Cyrano . Whatever his thought process, it's hard to argue with the results. With its heavenly design, vulnerable performances, and gorgeous musical numbers, the last musical offering of 2021 (or perhaps the first of 2022) is endlessly enchanting.     Cyrano de Bergerac's small stature makes him easy prey for the scorn and ridicule of the high-class Victorian society, but there has yet to be a foe that he could not disarm with his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. The person who could ever truly reject him is Roxanne, his childhood friend for whom he harbors love of the most romantic variety. Too afraid to court Roxanne himself, he chooses to use the handsome but t

Part of That World: Understanding Racebent Ariel

          I’ve said before that the public discourse around the current parade of live-action Disney remakes has been very contentious. Trying to have a civil conversation about the potential creative merits is something of an uphill battle. In most cases, this is just the general opposition to Hollywood’s penchant for repackaged material, but the mess does spill into other conversations.              Take the casting announcement of Halle Bailey in the role of the upcoming remake of The Little Mermaid . When Disney announced on July 3, 2019 that the highly coveted role of Ariel would go to an African-American actress, you saw a lot of excitement from crowds championing fair representation. You also saw a lot of outrage, most clear in the trending hashtag #NotMyAriel.              I hear a lot of people shouting that “Ariel has been white for two-hundred years. Why change that all the sudden?” But the fact is she hasn’t even “been Ariel” for that long. “Ariel” is the name the merma

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

            Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to ponder out loud what the purpose of a good film is. But film critics new and old don’t need much