Review: Scooby Doo{2002}

Rating: 3/5

Over the next few days, I will be reviewing all three Scooby Doo films in anticipation of Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster. So let’s get to it, shall we? This movie came out around the peak of my Scooby fandom. I was super excited to find out they were making a big screen adaptation of Scooby Doo. I didn’t care about the fact that it was going to be live action. I didn’t care that Scooby was going to be CGI. All I cared about was that they were turning Scooby Doo into a movie. Needless to say, I was there opening day on June 14th, 2002, and I loved it. Does it still hold up? Now that I’ve grown a bit, I do have some issues with the movie, however it is still a enjoyable movie, especially for Scooby fans.

Aftering solving one of their many cases, egos run wild and Mystery Inc decide to break up. Two years later, the gang is lured by a mysterious Emile Mondavarious to his amusment park Spooky Island, where the vacationing collage students are being put under a spell. But not all is as it seems. Can the gang work out their problems and save the world?

Story wise, Scooby Doo is pretty enjoyable. Though it isn’t exactly original. In fact, the story is very similar to Scooby Doo On Zombie Island. The gang reunites to go to a “spooky island” where strange happenings are going on. I would’ve prefered a straight up adaptation of Zombie Island. That being said, it is certainly far from terrible, and visually, the monsters are cool looking. Making Scrappy Doo the villain was genius I thought. It was a nice nod to the fans who had to put up with him over the years. There’s also just something hilarious about Scrappy wanting to take over the world.

The humor is good for the most part. I could do without the potty humor, but there are some really funny one liners in the movie. Actually I’m curious what the movie would’ve been before they decided to go with a more family friendly approach. Originally, the movie was going be more like “The Brady Bunch Movie”, with it making fun of the show and having more “adult” humor.  One of the things that was cut was a infamous deleted scene of Velma and Daphne sharing a kiss. There’s also that creepy deleted scene on the DVD of Velma dancing in a locker room. Was it the right choice to cut the movie down? Probably. Scooby Doo is a kids franchise after all. But it would’ve been interesting none the less.

The cast here is half and half. Matthew Lillard is the perfect casting choice for Shaggy. He basically is Shaggy. Linda Cardellini also does a great job in her role as Velma. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr….could do much better. I especially don’t care for the way Fred is potrayed in this movie. This version of Fred is basically the “dumb” Fred from A Pup Named Scooby Doo. Dumb Fred, while he does have his moments, I never really cared for. It was funny in Pup, but he comes comes off as annoying at times. I don’t really care for Neil Fanning as the voice of Scooby. And the CGI Scooby isn’t so great. I always thought the CG Scooby in the first movie looked kind of bland. Thankfully they fixed that in the sequel.

One thing this movie{and its sequel} got perfectly is the friendship betwwen Shaggy and Scooby. That is a essential part of the Scooby franchise, and they nailed it here. Mathew Lillard’s peformance really helped in making it believable.

There was a lot of hype surrounding this movie back in the day, and lots of merchandise too. Scholastic released a junior novel and a behind the scenes book. There also was the soundtrack, which had two awasome versions of the Scooby Doo theme done by Shaggy{the singer} and MxPx respectively. In the end, Scooby Doo ended up making $153 million at the domestic box office with a worldwide gross of $275 million.

If you haven’t watched Scooby Doo in a while, I highly reccomend you check it out. It’s not perfect, but it is a enjoyable Scooby movie. 3/5.

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