Scooby-Doo (2002)

Hello Reader, you may have recently seen my comments on Scooby doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, I went back to watch the first film as I had previously not seen it. Scarred by my previous experience from the last movie, I was reluctant to see this film however it did not disappoint. In this review, I will look at the good and bad points.Good points are the film has lots of Mr Bean, there is no female shaggy, scrappy remind me of my wife when we first met. Bad points are that at not point in this movie are monsters unleashed, there is no scenes that contain potions that turn Scooby into a slug. Oh sugar! another good point is that there is another plot twist that the main bad guy is someone that they are not, initially Mr Bean who turns out to be Scrappy Doo. This left me and my wife gasping as to why this happened which lead to a passionate evening and lets just we were screaming scooby dooby doo. More Bad points include that there is no tits, (male or female). In the scene where daphney in wrestling, there is a no penetration and b there is no Mortal Kombat style brutality! In this film, velma loses her glasses but in an adaptation I watched on an adult channel, her glasses were found on another man's part, this left me thoroughly disappointed!!! Another bad point, is that fred does not remove his ascot from neck whereas in monsters unleashed he does and damn son that is a beautiful neck! Oh beans! Another good point, oh wait! I mean a bad point is that at no point in the film does Fred say "Split up and look for clues" However (this is a good point as the film appeals to a LGBTQaudience as velma teams up with Scooby and Shaggy instead of the typical Velma, Daphney and Fred original trio which portrays Fred as a rampant sex criminal as he is surrounded by two women!!!!

It isn't necessarily bad...But it tries too hard to be the cartoon. In fact it strives to be the cartoon and, honestly, the cartoon does Scooby better.People didn't pay money to watch a live-action movie that tried so hard to be cartoonie that it forgot Scooby had a fairly serious tone to play the comedy off of.Instead it is zany where it should be serious and because of that the jokes never really land.Like when I was a little kid, I watch Scooby Doo because it's fun and its funny. And it does it by balancing the creepy with the goofy.The movie version skimps too much on the creepy and still tries to rely on the humor that worked so well because of the blend.In the end you have humor that ONLY works when it is referencing the cartoons and otherwise fails when it is trying to mimic the cartoons.Stay away from it. Watch the cartoons, most of them land the jokes better.

So, before I go any further, this film is pretty stupid. The director, Raja Gosnell is best known for a bunch of pandering kid's films. The common approach that I hate with this branch of "kid's films" is that there's no attempt to intellectually challenge the kid audience. It's always cheesy lines, pointless slapstick, and jokes about farting or basic toilet humour. Kids deserve better than that, in my opinion.That being said, this movie is still a guilty pleasure of mine. It's incredibly over-the-top and full of energy, yet the dialogue and story lines are so childish. Apparently, early drafts of the script were meant to include more adult themes, such as addressing the fact that Shaggy is actually a stoner, and Velma a lesbian. The film actually goes the safer kid-friendly route, although they do leave in some questionable scenes such as when Fred's soul gets transferred into Daphne's body and "she" says the line, "I can look at myself naked", which is still jarring to me after I saw the film in the cinemas as a child. Another example is when we see smoke coming out of the Mystery Machine, alluding to Shaggy being a stoner, only to reveal that he's barbecuing.The film is harmless, really and most of the cast perform well. Matthew Lillard does a pitch perfect performance of Shaggy, Linda Cardellini's Velma is fairly accurate, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Daphne is done all right, even though with the inclusion of her apparently being a martial arts master, that it brought up a tonne of Buffy the Vampire Slayer parallels. The one weak link of the human protagonists is Fred, played by Freddie Prinze Jr. He comes across like a conceited tool throughout the film. Typical paint by numbers "leader." The story is pretty standard although it does go a bit off the rails by the end. As I said, it's a harmless film, that for the most part, the kids will enjoy, if they have the stomach for the CGI monsters.

Why did this movie get made? How much money could this movie have possibly ever made to warrant it's production and release? Whom are the villains so enamored with feces that they wanted to make THIS movie? Don't you ever think about it? Don't you ever wonder 'what are the dark insidious forces that collude daily to ensure and enshrine mediocrity?' Are you telling me the world makes things like the Nazi party or this movie or global poverty, and you don't f*cking question it? All that misery, it's gotta spring up from somewhere, it doesn't just magically appear- and what, you don't f*cking notice? Don't f*cking care? Goddamn f*cking soul-crushing f*cking bastards.