Scooby-Doo

SCOOBY SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU?
RIGHT HERE ON THE BIG SCREEN…

A Film Review of Scooby-Doo

Copyright 2003 Glenn Walker

Being a comics fan there is a terror that I know only too well. It is the fear that a work from one genre (usually comics, but sometimes in this case a TV cartoon) will be brought to the big screen and altered in such a way to destroy it or make it unrecognizable. Ask any comics fan what they thought of Batman and Robin or Superman III and you might get some grasp of this terror. Hollywood hates comics and cartoons, that’s just the way it is.

Scooby-Doo is the exception. Its opening scene is the cartoon series. It’s as if the characters were lifted from Hanna-Barbera land and made flesh and blood – it is beautiful. And then the unthinkable happens. They evolve. The Scooby Gang grows up, they are changed by circumstances, they become three-dimensional. This is a win/win situation. The fans get the folks they’ve already fallen in love with and new movie people get real fleshed-out (pun intended) characters.



The story concerns the Mystery Inc. crew (Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and his CGI rendered talking pooch Scooby-Doo) reuniting to investigate a haunted theme park that seems to be brainwashing the youth of America. It pretty much could have been lifted right out of the cartoon and yet fits perfectly in the movie context. The cast is perfect especially Linda Cardellini as Velma when she trades in the bulky sweater for a low cut shirt.

There are lots of nods to the cartoon like references to Shaggy’s possible drug use, Fred’s strange fashion sense, Daphne always getting captured and Fred and Velma’s questionable sexuality. All in all this was a lot of fun and really, what more can you ask of in a movie? Go see it, you’ll enjoy it.