#anyways i really like this clip plotwise | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

animatedminds · 4 years

Text

Scoob! Review

Apologies: I watched the movie two weeks ago, but forgot to write this because I was so busy doing the Dragonball FighterZ thing. But, with that out of the way...

An interesting ride. As a longtime Scooby Doo fan, it was pretty much a given that I would watch this installment by the Warner Animation Group as soon as possible, and I had a pretty good time - albeit with some issue. It’s a fun Scooby adventure, mostly focusing on Scooby and Shaggy, as they go on a new kind of adventure. It’s full of fun references, super charmingly animated action scenes, and lots of humor that actually nails the characters’ goofball antics without diminishing them as the butt of the joke - which is something the previous theatrical series was hit or miss about - which which is also hampered by the fact that it doesn’t really give itself enough time or space to really make any of those things shine.

Spoilers, but only a couple.

The first thing we ever heard about this movie years ago was that it was conceived as a dramatic retool of Scooby Doo into a out-and-out spy series, in order to set up a Hanna Barbera cinematic universe a la the MCU (which, given that they already had a shared universe they could adapt in Future Quest, hit a little hard), giving the impression that Scooby was going to be a pastiche of James Bond. It’s very obvious from the finished product that this concept was since heavily changed, but you still see it in the film. The gang is still the same-old gang - a bunch of kooky teen mystery solvers - but plotwise it’s very much “what if instead of solving a mystery, the gang just fought a supervillain?” Which, let’s be clear, is not unheard of for the franchise: see Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase for another story that’s mostly just “fight a cool bad guy, with a tacked on mystery,” or the other Shaggy and Scooby-centric stuff like Ghoul School or Reluctant Werewolf for other movies that just plain eschew their usual setting entirely - this is a lot like those. It’s centered around the two characters’ relationship, like pretty much every theatrical Scooby release it seems, as this new challenge almost breaks their union, and the group as usual does very well in that kind of action. Faced with an army of dimwitted robots that can go from silly to terrifying multiple times in the same scene, Scoob and Shag’s typical mix of silly bumbling with surprisingly - and destructively - clever antics make for some great scenes, my favorite being a madcap chase through an amusement park that ends with them getting away on a ferris wheel that’s been knocked of its hinges.

This is very much a movie that wants to be a Hanna Barbera crossover, but is trying hard to restrain itself. As a kid Shaggy was a fan of the Impossibles (who, iirc, were once intended to get a movie as part of this universe) with models and posters that the camera never completely focuses on, you see Laff-a-Lympics on an arcade machine, references to classic Scooby writers and actors as location names (I laughed at Messick Mountain, and the Takamoto Bowl outright went over my head at first), even little things like Scooby bowling like Fred Flintstone or the blink and you’ll miss it appearance of Yankee Doodle Pigeon - and yes, Captain Caveman shows up, fully voiced by Tracy Morgan and kicking butt for a very short scene, with one of his show’s supporting characters (Dee Dee Skyes) as a prominent in this movie’s plot. There’s even musical references in addition to visible ones: at one point, the movie even orchestrates one of the classic bits of Scooby Doo background music. I was hoping for a reference to the classic Scooby Doo / Blue Falcon theme, but alas that was one nod we didn’t get.

However, this approach does work especially well with Blue Falcon - who was originally built up through Scooby Doo, sharing a timeslot, advertisement and technically a theme song, and in time has more or less become to Scooby Doo what Donkey Kong is to Mario: technically a supporting character, but able to do his own stuff every once in a while. There have been several Blue Falcon Scooby Doo crossovers in the last few years (though in terms of sheer number of references this movie’s got nothing on Mask of the Blue Falcon), and they’ve all been very fun as each show, movie or comic reinterpreted the character to fit their specific world - and this movie’s novice Blue Falcon who is kind of an egoistical loser, but turns out to have a lot to learn even from Scooby and Shaggy’s brand of cowardly bravery, grows on you even if he has kind of a rough initial landing.

Unfortunately, this is also a movie that very much wants that rigid hour and a half timeslot, and has absolutely no interest in a going a second longer - and that’s where it’s problems come in. I’ve said before that animated films have become more and more written with expediency in mind: plot points are rushed, denouements are minimized, side or even main characters might not get much utilization, and sometimes things come of as just kind of happening to the protagonists without much set-up. Even the best or the best animation companies fall into these traps at times, and this movie is a good example of what it looks like if you fall into that too much. Take the Scooby gang - Velma, Daphne, and Fred. They’re not really fleshed out that much in this movie, even if they were tweaked a bit with their new VAs - but that’s not necessarily a problem in itself, given the heavy focus on Scooby and Shaggy. What’s more noticeable is where this intersects the plot: for example - one of the better examples of what I’m talking about - the scene that kicks off the whole story. Fred, Velma and Daphne want to expand Mystery Inc, and call Simon Cowell to invest in them. Cowell decides Scooby and Shaggy are incompetent because reasons, and the two storm off. This is later framed as the gang abandoning the duo, that’s not really what happens. Once Cowell hits the scene, beyond one or two lines the rest of the gang essentially ceases to exist, and barely reacts to anything: there’s no moments with them where they seem to buy into what Cowell is saying, there’s nothing beforehand that implies that they’re dissatisfied with Scooby and Shaggy, there’s isn’t even really a status quo for what their dynamic is like. We cut straight from them meeting as kids to them having a supposed fight as adults - this is something that wouldn’t have taken a lot of time, but would have strengthened pretty much everything, from Scooby and Shaggy’s reaction to the trio’s guilt later, but is skipped over entirely. The others get very little beyond being summed up as “the muscle” (Fred), “the face” (Daphne) and “the brains” (Velma), and it feels less like expediency and more like we missed a scene somewhere.

Granted, this particular thing also runs a unique problem that the Scooby gang face. As characters who just turned fifty and who are well entrenched in pop culture, adaptations often assume you know who they already - and this movie definitely assumes you can do its work for it and establish a baseline for the Scooby gang on your own... and on that front, I suppose it does better than the previous film series, which based a lot of its humor on fandom in-jokes they poorly assumed everyone agreed with. But... there’s a degree to which every film needs to establish a baseline for that it itself to trying to do, and I think skipping this hurt the film more than it should have. And it’s hardly the only point where the need for speed cuts out the flow of the film. Scooby and Shaggy get abducted by Blue Falcon, whose assistant then promptly exposits on everything the audience doesn’t know yet about the plot so that they can just skip straight to more action - basically setting up a question and then answering it immediately without set-up. This essentially robs Dick Dastardy - definitely the best thing about the movie - of a strong introduction, in favor of, again, expediency, and it’s kind of baffling given that there’s later scenes where the rest follows the mystery and so repeats that exposition anyway. I mentioned that Blue Falcon himself got a rough initial landing, and that’s because his intro scene is just a lot of new element popping in with exposition, interspersed with pop culture references - and that exposition just stops the whole thing cold for a while. We hit again the “expects you to know” angle with Falcon himself, who is a legacy character of the original Falcon - who we never see, which raises the question of why they bothered to make him a legacy and not just a novice hero in the first place. I’ve always been a strong believer that you can introduce elements without needless explanation unless who introduce concepts that suggest explanation: Scoob and Shag being a fan of the original Blue Falcon, Dynomutt constantly reminiscing about him, and there being a full Falcon organization around which the movie pivots, along with lots of reference, suggest the need for at least a little more than we got - even if it’s just a thirty clip of the way Blue Falcon worked before Brian (the new Falcon) came along - but the movie just wants to rush past it. The entire quest on which the plot is centered it halfway through when we first encounter it, and doesn’t get any explanation at all until halfway through the movie. And then there’s little things like Captain Caveman cameo, which just leave you wanting more.

This happens again and again, with plot points, characters, all sorts - things introduced halfway and then brushed past as though they’re not. People don’t expect much from animated movies, and stuff like this is one of the reasons why - this movie feels sometimes like it was written for tv, which is ironic given how it ended up being released. But the movies that were themselves DTV or released to TV, like Shaggy’s Showdown or Legend of the Phantasaur, the aforementioned Mask of the Blue Falcon or - my perosnal favorite - Moon Monster Madness, even tend to not have these problems themselves, because they’re more measured and precise about what they want to introduce and why. It’s great to be childish, as long you do childish well.

But now that the criticism portion of the review is done, I will say that this doesn’t hamper the movie’s desire to be fun and easy to follow, it just makes it not as much so as it clearly could have been. If you wanted more Falcon, or more Scooby and Shaggy, more Mystery Inc shenangians, more Dastardly, more adventure, more of a certain gag or humor, more of really any of the movie’s best points, you weren’t getting them that much because the movie was trying to do all of them all at once. But one the movie starts getting traction, about halfway through, that starts to fade as everything coalesces. All the characters meet, we finally know what the heck is going on, and it’s just a straight shot to the end with lots of what this movie does best: cool visuals, silly characters doing silly things, and brave characters doing brave things. Much as I wish there was more to the Captain Caveman segment, it’s one of the most visually hilarious parts of the movie, with the stark contrast of these hi-tech, modern character colliding with these explicitly more cartoony prehistoric designs and antics, and its just wonderful. Everything about Dick Dastardly’s story is great - though I was wishing for a Penelope Pitstop reference - and he even gets a heartwarming conclusion to the whole thing.

I don’t know where the series is going after this - whether they do indeed intend to make more Hanna Barbera movies in this vein. The credits teased Johnny Quest, Frankenstein Jr, Grape Ape (who according to concept art was supposed to be in this one), Atom Ant, and even a bit of Wacky Races, and it’s clear they have the love for classic Hanna Barbera to make it happen. I just hope that if they do, they go with a series who can expand this in a more concise way, with a little better character introduction. I’ve still got my fingers crossed for Future Quest.

The film is still very recommended by me. I loved it, I watched it twice, and it a heck of a lot of fun even with its hang-ups. If you haven’t seen it, there are worse ways for a parent, a kid, or just a big ol’ child at heart to spend an afternoon.

#scooby doo #scoob #movie review #animation review #shaggy #daphne blake #velma dinkley #fred jones #hanna barbera #warner animation group #blue falcon #dynomutt #dick dastardly #animated film #review #animated minds

15 notes · View notes