Not a lot of Scooby snacks in this pile of dooby-doo

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/06/2002 (8551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PLEASE notice that, in the opening sequence of the movie Scooby Doo, the ghost glows.

When the five members of Mystery Inc. discover that the ghost is really a man disguised as a ghost, the glow disappears, forgotten. Why was he glowing? Don’t ask me.

In ordinary cinema, that might be considered a sloppy loose end, but in this movie, it’s an accurate homage to the Saturday morning cartoon on which the movie is based. In the original 1969 Hannah-Barbera TV series Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and all its subsequent incarnations, humans-disguised-as-ghosts always gave off a glow, or were even transparent, before the gang ripped off their masks and revealed the spooks to be some miscellaneous criminals perpetrating some miscellaneous nasty tricks.

How the hell did they disguise themselves as being transparent? No explanation was ever offered.

For that reason and many others, the Scooby Doo series has always been — let’s face facts, people — crap. Compared to animated kids series that came earlier (Rocky and Bullwinkle) or later (Spongebob Squarepants), Scooby Doo is mediocre, disposable cartoon junk. The fact that the show survives in syndication is only testimony to it’s so-bad-it’s-good entertainment value.

The trick facing director Raja Gosnell and screenwriter James Gunn is to honour the series and make fun of it simultaneously. This involves the delicate kid-movie art of occasionally winking at the parents without the kids noticing.

Only the cowardly Great Dane Scooby is animated — computer-animated, that is — in the live-action movie, in which Matthew Lillard truly embodies the hippie-beatnik Shaggy, Freddie Prinze Jr. pegs sturdy front man Fred as a pompous dolt, and Linda Cardellini makes the turtleneck-clad Velma an all-out hottie. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays perennial damsel-in-distress Daphne as a woman determined to stay out of danger and kick ass. In other words: Daphne-cum-Buffy.

The film introduces something like dramatic tension by having the group break up in the opening reel over internal rivalries. Velma feels unappreciated, Fred hogs the credit, and Daphne is sick of always being the one to be in danger. But they reunite two years later when they are invited to a spring break resort called Spooky Island where the suspicious owner Mr. Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson, slumming) is concerned that his clientele arrive as normal students but leave as zombies.

In the ensuing adventure, Gosnell discreetly jests at questions that concern parents (Is Shaggy high? Which way does Velma swing?) while leaving the kids to enjoy a loud, effects-rampant romp.

Unfortunately, Gosnell is no stranger to pandering, either. A scene in which Shaggy and Scooby indulge in a burping/farting contest is particularly vile and gratuitous. It was gratifying that the scene met with an icy response from the kids at the screening I attended.