Due to the ongoing pandemic, new movies are only available to watch on video on demand or streaming services like Prime Video, Hulu, or Netflix. Titles that would have been released in theaters now have been shelved or put online. One of these titles is Scoob!, directed by straight to video veteran Tom Cervone, and features the Scooby-Doo “gang” that populated our childhood cartoons. The plot pivots around Scooby (Frank Welker), Shaggy (Will Forte), Velma (Gina Rodriguez), Daphne (Amanda Seyfried), and Fred (Zac Efron) having to stop a dogpocalyse from being released on earth from the hands of Dick Dastardly (Jason Issacs). Along the way, Blue Falcon (Mark Whalberg) and Dynomutt (Ken Jeong) stumble into Shaggy and Scooby in order to stop Dastardly’s evil intentions.
One of the biggest problems in this film is the out of place pop culture or movie references. One instance includes a Harry Potter joke that Daphne makes about a costume Velma is wearing. Basically, this film overloads its time with so many references that don’t add up to anything important besides having children chuckle about it as if it were funny or integrated. Generally, movie or pop culture references themselves don’t make a film bad, but when presented with so many, you cannot deny that it weighs the film down. Another major issue is with the backstory of how Shaggy and Scooby met. The scene starts with an abandoned Scooby searching for snacks. As he hides from the police, and presumably animal control, he meets up with the lonely Shaggy, and the rest is history. However, the placement of certain technological devices doesn’t match up with the timeline of how the two met. Considering that Scooby-Doo debuted on television in 1969, before smartphones, the story of how Shaggy and Scooby meet is inconsistent with what’s already been established.
What the film does well is creating a story from scratch. It doesn’t just start out with its typical mystery case of “who’s behind the mask,” but it introduces old characters from the Hanna-Barbara cartoons in the past like Blue Falcon, Dynomutt and Dick Dastardly. Since these characters might not have enough relevance for the latest generation of kids to understand what they represent, this film provides enough detail to establish who they are and how they’re important to the plot. This is an improvement from the past, where the characters in Scooby-Doo are relatively one-dimensional and won’t be remembered thereafter. Therefore, having characters from the past reintroduced as “new” characters for the audience to witness is a refresher for the past generation to remind them who they are and the new generation to experience them for the first time on the big screen. Scoob! also presents the old but effective technique of slapstick comedy. The many comedic sound effects, playing after silly instances like a character falling down the stairs, brings back a certain nostalgia for the audience. Hearing older sound effects like this in a more recent film like Scoob! brings back on how episodes from the late 60s used to be like.
Overall, Tom Cervone does a good job of expanding what would normally be a Scooby-Doo episode into a full length movie. The animation is well done, and while the many references are unnecessary and overloaded, the introduction of old characters from the Hanna-Barbara cartoons were a refreshing touch. Scoob! takes on more of an animated and original tone with some old characters while also introducing a new plot to the Scooby-Doo franchise instead of having a repeat of a typical Scooby-Doo episode or straight to DVD film.
2.5/5 STARS