Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright Review
The Plot: The Mystery Inc. crew head to Chicago, where Fred and Daphne are competing in the hit TV show Talent Star. But in order to win, they will have to capture the phantom who has been haunting the old opera house where the competition is taking place.
I’ll put this out there right now: I hate reality TV. I cannot stand it. In fact, the only “reality TV” I do watch is the occasional episode of Pawn Stars. But anyway, with that being said I went into Stage Fright with a open mind. Mainly because I’m surprised they haven’t tried to tie into the whole success of American Idol before. I feel like that setting does fit with Scooby-Doo, and it does for the most part.
Since Stage Fright is Fred/Daphne centric, it is heavy on the shipping. And I mean HEAVY. While I think the Fraphne relationship works for the part, I can’t help but think we’ve been getting too much shipping in Scooby-Doo lately. Admittedly Mystery Incorporated turned me off to the whole relationship thing. Every time they add relationships to one of these movies/shows, I feel like it never goes anywhere. That’s no exception here. Granted I did enjoy some of it, but I’m sure we’ll see the Fraphne relationship back at square one in the next movie. Fred and Daphne’s song was okay. Personally, I think “Trap of Love” from SD:MI better.
I liked the whole Phantom of the Opera setting with the the closed down opera house. I also liked how there was five different phantoms. I found that plot twist to be a lot of fun. What I didn’t find fun however, was the cast of supporting characters. Most of them were unlikable. Some downright annoying, I also found the villain’s motivations to be a bit ridiculous{then again, a lot of Scooby-Doo’s villains’ motivations are ridiculous!}.
Another thing that worked well in Stage Fright was the humor. There’s some nice Freddie stuff in here, including a moment where Daphne asks Fred why they always run into mysteries, and Fred replies with “Doesn’t everybody?”. We also find out that Fred sleeps with a net. They even brought the “Dog? Where?” joke back from the early DTVs.
Like recent DTV movies, we get a action set piece at the end. We get a nice car chase here between the villain and the gang, ending with the main phantom{who hates trash} ending up in a pile of trash.. Overall, I think it’s one of the more enjoyable finales we’ve gotten in recent years.
Overall Stage Fright is a enjoyable experience, I just wish some of the characters were more likable and that it wasn’t so Fraphne heavy. I did like the Phantom of the Opera setting and the whole misdirection with the villain. And I didn’t end hating the American Idol stuff, which is a good thing in my book. 8/10.
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Yes they do go to the point of no return with their relationship. And what do they do? They awkwardly squash it in the end credits so they can either ignore it or go back to the midly (by now and because the DTV had to be so focused on them) tedious jealous moments between the two of them.
They should've just used this as the moment they finally get together and used future appearances to build on it, but there's a taboo of getting them together in standard continuity. Of course this is a movie, not a TV series. You'd have to keep on explaining how they got together which would be time consuming. (That's one example) But to be honest it wouldn't, not if you built on it and time viewers would just accept that they're just together now.
Exactly! It was especally bad in SD:MI. I don't feel like it's ever paid off.
And it never will. It's just a running gag to Warner Bros. Hanna-Barbera realized Fred and Daphne didn't work in the New Scooby-Doo Movies series.
I thought the movie was nothing but plot holes, too Fred heavy, Daphne had almost no role except to fawn over Fred, and... let's be honest, WB stole Shaggy's guitar playing skills and wrote them onto Fred. Without that the plot wouldn't have had a basis.
Fred and Daphne will never really be together. The problem lies in the continuity. Every so often the writers will start all over again, they never allow the characters to age or develop past a certain point. This happens for the simple reason that the audience is more interested in the "will they, won't they" aspect of the relationship than the relationship itself. The WB executives don't want their characters married off (I mean comic book companies have been killing off love interest and rewriting history just to keep their characters single). So this relationship will keep on resetting to square one probably forever.