Scooby Doo

Review by By Clint Morris

If Scooby-Snacks were as tasty as the goods on offer here, I'd consume them in moderation - for this serving is an only just warm revision of the titular toon, but with enough appetizing coating to please the laypeople.

Directed by Raja Gosnell and based on a screenplay by James Gunn, this "Scooby" is about as close to the classic cartoon gang as we could probably get - cartoonish scenarios, outlandish heroes and villains, and talent as appropriately wooden as a splintered plank.

Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby have thwarted many a ghost and a heap of spectre in their time as private mystery solvers. Driving from place to place in their constant Mystery Machine van, all playing their parts in capturing said foe, it's all grown a morsel tiresome for the usually tight group, and a foreseen spat causes the gang to float apart.

Two years later and best friends Shaggy and Scooby-Doo are offered the chance to return to their roots, solving a mystery, but it's going to take one big meal ticket to pull them from their beachside parking spot. Co-incidentally, the former members of the Mystery Inc Group have also been asked to help solve the mystery - and hence the old troupe reforms for the Spooky Island invite.

If anyone can work out why the inhabitants of Spooky Island are turning into zombies, it's the Mystery Gang, and with their own level of expertise, they'll head straight into the action. Either that, or the opposite way, running and screaming from the ghastly inhabitants.

Scooby Doo was made on the cheap in Australia, in turn making some of the sets and milieu look a little cheap and cardboardy - some look like left-overs from a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers sequel. The story itself bears some similarity to the show we grew up watching on TV, but the superfluous update to the template is where it sours.

For instance, Shaggy and Scooby having a farting contest. Oh please! And where's that delicious innocence the cartoon girls possessed? Do we really need all that cleavage... and on Velma!

Like a dozen eggs, there are usually only a couple of rotten hard-shells that spoil the batch. It goes for the film. In this case: it's our leads, Prinze Jr and Michelle-Gellar who bring Scooby down a notch or two.

They're terribly inexpert, and at there token worst. Prinze Jr is for all intents and purposes playing Prinze Jr, and that God-awful blonde hair is the most disconcerting character accessory since Robin's cod-piece in the last Caped Crusader flick.

Sarah Michelle Gellar is also uniformly out of place. She's arrived on the Scooby Doo set ill equipped and apathetic, and it shows in the ho-hum justice she does to Daphne. Memo to Sarah: can you play anything other than Buffy?

What saves Scooby Doo though, is the untainted futility of it all. Matthew Lillard is outlandishly spot-on as Shaggy, and his scenes with our lead K-9 are well worthwhile, and sometimes preposterously funny. And, if you remember annoying little Scrappy Doo, you'll get a kick out of Gunn's treatment of the greatly detested inking.

Scooby Doo is, for the most part, reasonably fun, but whenever the more inept human leads grace the screen, you'll no doubt ask yourself: "Scooby Doo, where are you?!"

3 out of 5

Scooby Doo
Australian release: Thursday June 20th
Cast: Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini, Rowan Atkinson, Isla Fisher.
Director: Raja Gosnell.
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