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

Part of That World: Understanding Racebent Ariel

If I were to say that the discussion around the Disney live-action parade has been contentious, I would be roughly the 84,297th person to propose this. Historically, this sort of thing has just been the general opposition to Hollywood’s penchant for repackaged material, and how the Disney machine is specially equipped for this purpose. That's old hat. But something happens peculiar happens when the Disney machine shows a different face--when it looks like the parade might actually be leading the charge toward something like progress. When Disney announced on July 3, 2019 that the highly coveted role of Ariel, The Little Mermaid, would go to African-American actress, Halle Bailey, 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, revealing a face of social fury that ca...

Finding Nemo: The Thing About Film Criticism ...

Film is a mysterious thing. It triggers emotional responses in the audience that are as surprising as they are all-encompassing. As a medium, film is capable of painting stunning vistas that feel like they could only come to life behind the silver screen, but many of the most arresting displays on film arise from scenes that are familiar, perhaps even mundanely so. It’s an artform built on rules and guidelines–young film students are probably familiar with principles like the rule of thirds or the Kuleshov effect–but someone tell me the rule that explains why a line like “We’ll always have Paris,” just levels you. There are parts of the film discussion that cannot be anticipated by a formula or a rulebook, and for that we should be grateful. Arrival (2016) But the thing about film–and especially film criticism–is that film critics are not soothsayers. Their means of divining the artistic merit of a movie are n...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Westerns Riding off into the Sunset

In both my Les Miserables and Moulin Rouge! pieces, I made some comment about the musical as the genre that receives the least love in the modern era of film. I stand by that, but I acknowledge there is one other genre for which you could potentially make a similar case. I am referring of course to the western film. Musicals at least have Disney keeping them on life alert, and maybe one day we’ll get the Wicked movie Universal has been promising us for ten years [FUTURE EDIT: All good things, folks ]. But westerns don’t really have a place in the modern film world. Occasionally we’ll get a film like No Country for Old Men which use similar aesthetics and themes, but they are heavily modified from the gun-blazing-horseback-racing-wide-open-desert w esterns of old. Those died, oddly enough, around the same time musicals fell out of fashion. Professors Susan Kord and Elizabeth K...

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...

Bright Young Women: The Legacy of Ariel and The Little Mermaid

I had an experience one summer at a church youth camp that I reflect on quite a bit. We were participating in a “Family Feud” style game between companies, and the question was on favorite Disney movies as voted on by participants in our camp. (No one asked for my input on this question. Yes, this still burns me.) I think the top spot was either for Tangled or The Lion King , but what struck me was that when someone proposed the answer of “The Little Mermaid,” the score revealed that not a single participant had listed it as their favorite Disney film. On the one hand, this doesn’t really surprise me. In all my years of Disney fandom, I’ve observed that The Little Mermaid occupies this this very particular space in pop culture: The Little Mermaid is in a lot of people’s top 5s, but very few people identify it as their absolute favorite Disney film. This film’s immediate successors in the Disne...

PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 25 Most Essential Movies of the Century

"Best." "Favorite." "Awesomest." I spent a while trying to land on which adjective best suited the purposes of this list. After all, the methods and criteria with which we measure goodness in film vary wildly. "Favorite" is different than "Best," but I would never put a movie under "Best" that I don't at least like. And any film critic will tell you that their favorite films are inevitably also the best films anyways ... But here at the quarter-century mark, I wanted to give some kind of space to reflect on which films are really deserving of celebration. Which films ought to be discussed as classics in the years ahead. So ... let's just say these are the films of the 21st century that I want future champions of the film world--critics and craftsmen--to be familiar with. Sian Hader directing the cast of CODA (2021) There are a billion or so ways to measure a film's merit--its technical perfectio...

REVIEW: The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Some die-hard fans of the franchise may have to correct me, but I don't remember Mario having a solid backstory. Or any backstory. I'm pretty sure he just emerged fully grown from a sewer pipe one day and started chucking turtle shells at mushrooms for fun. I remember, for example, that Mario and Luigi are canonically brothers, yet there's little opportunity in the video games to explore anything like a relationship between them. That's domain better trod by film. And this weekend's feature film adaptation from Illumination does succeed in carving out character, personality, and history for all the players on the board. The fact that Mario and Luigi are brothers isn't just a way to excuse their nearly identical apparel. Their relationship is the foundation for Mario's quest. Even more impressive is that the film reaches its degree of texture with its characters without cramming in exposition overload. This is one ar...

Investigating Nostalgia - Featuring "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Pokemon: Detective Pikachu"

The 1700’s and the age of exploration saw a massive swell of people leaving their homelands for an extended period or even for life. From this explosion of displacement emerged a new medical phenomenon. Travelers were diagnosed with excessive irritability, loss of productivity, and even hallucinations. The common denominator among those afflicted was an overwhelming homesickness. Swiss physician Johannes Hofer gave a name to this condition. The name combines the Latin words algos , meaning “pain” or “distress,” and nostos , meaning “homecoming,” to create the word nostalgia . Appleton's Journal, 23 May 1874, describes the affliction: Sunset Boulevard (1950) “The nostalgic loses his gayety, his energy, and seeks isolation in order to give himself up to the one idea that pursues him, that of his country. He embellishes the memories attached to places where he was brought up, and creates an ideal world where his imagination revels with an obstinate persistence.” Contempora...

REVIEW: Turning Red

It's really easy to overlook a film like Turning Red , a non-franchise entry from Pixar that reads like a cross between Teen Wolf and The Edge of Seventeen . Perhaps that's why Disney chose to ship this film directly to streaming while (as of now) the Buzz Lightyear origin story is still primed for theaters. But I'll save that conversation for another time. It's really easy to overlook a film like Turning Red , but I really hope we don't. The film follows a thirteen year old girl who experiences the onset of an ancient family curse that transforms them into giant red pandas when they experience any high-volume emotion. This can turn studying for an algebra test or seeing her favorite boy band perform live into a very awkward experience. Thank goodness there's a family ritual that can lock away the beast for good. But as Meilin learns to live with this quirk, it starts to feel less like a curse and more like a superpower. Is sh...

The Night of the Hunter: Redefining "Childlike Innocence"

The veneration of children as a reservoir of evergreen purity is a thread that informs much of modern storytelling, both in the entertainment arena as well as the political one. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) The media likes to cast children as vessels of uncompromised goodness that adults could only ever hope to emulate. This is interesting since most theories on children’s moral development actually posit that humans don’t internalize principles until they are in adulthood, if ever. Lawrence Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development traced out childhood as a time where individuals judge morality largely on reward vs punishment. Still, their purity forms the bedrock of the conversation. Because the future hinges upon their innocence, efforts to preserve their unblemished state can go to any length. You can justify any number of actions as long as you are doing it “for the children.” The incentive to ban the teaching of critical race theory and the histor...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog