Reviewer Hugh Verheylewegen has a look at Scoob, the latest incarnation of Scooby Doo.
Directed by Tony Cervone, Scoob follows Scooby Doo and the gang on an all new mystery-solving adventure.
Scoob was initially supposed to be newest theatrical release of the popular Scooby Doo franchise. With theaters still closed we had the movie given to us immediately on VOD, as if Warner Bros just didn’t care for giving it a proper release in cinemas, and after watching it for myself I can see why.
Looking up the story team of this movie I realized it was created by the makers of Alvin & the Chipmunks Road Chip, Rampage and Playing with Fire. This film was junk. Pointless, directionless, passionless junk. I don’t think I have seen a movie so ashamed of its own source material in really a long time.
Right from the start I knew that the filmmakers were attempting to mak
e Scooby Doo modernized and more 2020 to appeal more to the kids of today. Trending songs every few minutes, obsession over smart phones, celebrity voices and appearances being stuffed in whenever possible… this movie has all the kind of related stuff you would expect from the makers of Alvin & the Chipmunks Road Chip, Rampage and Playing with Fire.
I honestly don’t even know how to describe the story either. It starts with how Shaggy and Scooby first meet, then jumps to how they meet the others, and then jumps again to them being a team, and somehow we are expected to see this as character development, I think? If that was the intention it failed. There is no focus on delivering a real story here. Just a bunch of complicated bs that makes no sense and has zero attempts of characterization. It’s like we were expected to know of these characters already from all the shows and spin offs, but if that was the case why even include how they all first meet? There was no point.
For most of the film the gang is mostly separated, which was a huge mistake because in place of possible team dynamics we just get a huge bore fest.
We also get a mediocre bad guy named Dick who perhaps might be the worst Scooby Doo villain ever made. Yes even worse than Scrappy in the first live action Scooby Doo film. His plan barely makes any sense, and he’s not even some masked monster or ghost, he’s just some guy with a twirly mustache. At least with all of the previous adaptations of Scooby Doo there is some level of creativity when it comes to the bad guys but here there’s just nothing.
And to add on to an already non-sensical plot we suddenly get superheroes. They are there because they are there. I really don’t know what to say.
The animation is bland and boring, just like the story, and it doesn’t ever feel really vibrant or full of life even when compared to the cartoons. Voice acting I guess I could say was probably the best part, but when paired with the boring story and animation it really drags down the performances of the cast.
I’ve been a long time fan of Scooby Doo when done right but this was just a pointless cash grab of a special property that attempted to be more up to date when it didn’t need to be. Previous animated Scooby Doo shows and films have done well on their own and still do well now and are far more entertaining and focused than this film was. I’ll even give some credit to the live action films too. Regardless of how you may feel about them at least they had some creativity, entertaining scenes and most importantly a focused story. They didn’t try to have so many things added on at once and mostly tried to stick to the source material, unlike this film. I’m all for having a new generation of Scooby Doo films but not if they are going to be like this. I’m going to give Scoob a D-
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