In light of the rather…mediocre result that was the new Tom & Jerry movie, I figured I might as well try a similar attempt to do a live action version of a popular animated series. I was more or less curious about the 2002 live action Scooby-Doo movie. Scooby-Doo at least had some characters with distinct personalities and a formula of sorts that could probably be expanded out to feature length without too much trouble. Heck, there had been plenty of animated direct-to-home-video Scooby-Doo flicks already. Why not?
OK, I am only a moderate fan of Scooby-Doo, but my curiosity was peaked when I learned James Gunn wrote the screenplay. That was just odd enough of a fact to make me curious enough to check the movie out.
Opening with what looks like how a typical episode of the old show would end, with the four kids and talking dog of Mystery Inc. capturing a ghost that was really someone in a costume, complete with a guest appearance by a celebrity (in this case, Pamela Anderson), but there are problems. Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) likes to take credit for everything with the media. That annoys Velma (Linda Cardellini), tired as she is of being overlooked considering Fred is more or less a self-centered moron. Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is tired of being treated like the damsel in distress because she does seem to get captured rather frequently. Really, the only ones more or less happy with how things are working out are Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (voice of Neil Fanning), but when Shaggy outright points out they have, essentially, a formula that works, the other three just quit and go their separate ways.
Flash forward two years later, and the group are called together by one Emile Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson), owner of an island amusement park with a horror theme. College-aged guests flock to the place, but they seem…off after they’ve been there for a time. He’d like to know why, but the kids of Mystery Inc are not particularly keen to work together at first. Shaggy and Scooby hate being scared and the other three are still mad about the stuff that led them to break up the group. Can they reunite and get to the bottom of things, especially since for once this time it might actually be something supernatural?
In my general experience, the best Scooby-Doo stories these days are the ones that acknowledge and play with the formula. The regular formula works, but it’s when these stories tries to junk it outright that I think it goes wrong. That said, I do like it when the better Scooby-Doo stories actually go a little meta with the storyline in works like Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated did to great effect. This movie makes some feints in that direction but never quite gets there. That more or less comes down to the cast. Lillard is pitch-perfect as Shaggy, a role he still voices today, and Cardellini actually does a good job as Velma. But Gellar and Prinze are both just rather bland, and considering the pair have been married since the same year this movie came out, it is kinda weird the two have no romantic chemistry with each other…then again, that isn’t played up much to the end so it might be less of their fault and more of just one more thing the script tossed in and didn’t develop very well.
That said, it was moderately amusing, had some decent slapstick scenes, and played up all the familiar tropes and storylines everyone who is a fan of Scooby-Doo no doubt remembers very well. Isla Fisher shows up as a love interest for Shaggy named “Mary Jane” and the script makes some motions in the directions of some of the more salacious theories about the cartoon, but it’s still kid friendly. Perhaps a little too much so given the bathroom humor that occasionally pops up in the story. It’s ultimately a rather bland experience with Lillard and Atkinson generally being fun and not a whole lot else unless you really are a hardcore fan of this property. So, now that I know how this one turned out, I won’t mind so much skipping the sequel.
Grade: C+
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