I rented it because I wanted to watch something colourful, pointless and stupid. "Scooby-Doo" is all those things, for sure...but it's also highly entertaining and funny, which was a complete surprise.
It seems to be a Hollywood trend to take the TV Shows and cartoons we watched as children and remake them in an ironic way. Scooby-Doo is no exception, where everything we suspected about the characters when we watched the cartoon -- Fred being vain, Daphne being an airhead, Velma being repressed and badly in need of therapy, Scrappy being an obnoxious egotist, and Shaggy eating so much because he had some sort of drug issues -- is brought to the front. The movie is not so much about the mystery the gang is solving, it's about making fun of the things that weren't supposed to be funny in the cartoon. And while some of those things are easy targets ("It would have worked if it wasn't for..."), the script had me laughing over and over again at it's more-ironic-than-thou cleverness.
A lot of credit goes to Matthew Lillard and Linda Cardellini. Lillard as Shaggy is such a perfect carbon copy that I almost felt like punching him. And Cardellini has Velma down pat, right down to that self-satisfied sideways glance when she's exposing a mystery. Freddy Prinze and Sarah Michelle Geller were passable, and it was only the computer animated Scooby that really annoyed me: he was just too high-tech, I felt.
In my opinion the movie succeeded most when it was subtle (like the bartender telling Velma that he likes her sweater, and her giggling about Scrappy's glandular problem). Was it obvious I thought Velma kicked butt? She was the only one I liked in the cartoon and I'm thrilled that she was so perfectly reproduced.
The bonus materials are great. I much prefer the animated opening that they cut out, and Velma's "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" scream was hilarious, as was her cabaret number.
So, the movie is funny. Sometimes it's insufferably juvenile and stupid, and sometimes it will strike the adult viewer as a bit too childish, but the movie does what it set out to do: it entertains you, and it pokes clever fun at infamous cultural icons. Expect nothing more than that and you'll have a good time with it.
It seems to be a Hollywood trend to take the TV Shows and cartoons we watched as children and remake them in an ironic way. Scooby-Doo is no exception, where everything we suspected about the characters when we watched the cartoon -- Fred being vain, Daphne being an airhead, Velma being repressed and badly in need of therapy, Scrappy being an obnoxious egotist, and Shaggy eating so much because he had some sort of drug issues -- is brought to the front. The movie is not so much about the mystery the gang is solving, it's about making fun of the things that weren't supposed to be funny in the cartoon. And while some of those things are easy targets ("It would have worked if it wasn't for..."), the script had me laughing over and over again at it's more-ironic-than-thou cleverness.
A lot of credit goes to Matthew Lillard and Linda Cardellini. Lillard as Shaggy is such a perfect carbon copy that I almost felt like punching him. And Cardellini has Velma down pat, right down to that self-satisfied sideways glance when she's exposing a mystery. Freddy Prinze and Sarah Michelle Geller were passable, and it was only the computer animated Scooby that really annoyed me: he was just too high-tech, I felt.
In my opinion the movie succeeded most when it was subtle (like the bartender telling Velma that he likes her sweater, and her giggling about Scrappy's glandular problem). Was it obvious I thought Velma kicked butt? She was the only one I liked in the cartoon and I'm thrilled that she was so perfectly reproduced.
The bonus materials are great. I much prefer the animated opening that they cut out, and Velma's "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" scream was hilarious, as was her cabaret number.
So, the movie is funny. Sometimes it's insufferably juvenile and stupid, and sometimes it will strike the adult viewer as a bit too childish, but the movie does what it set out to do: it entertains you, and it pokes clever fun at infamous cultural icons. Expect nothing more than that and you'll have a good time with it.
