Scooby-Doo (2002)

Okay this actually warrants explanation. I hadn't the faintest clue what to do this week, and as I'm living my day to day Duder life I keep seeing these damn posts from a friend of mine about this movie. And the more I thought about it the more I needed to rant about something, and in fact I've been in this mood for quite some time so let's go!

Oh God. Tis' a sad day when one has to talk about the live action Scooby-Doo movies. I gotta be honest, I ate this shit up when I was 7 years old seeing this movie in the theater and just thank your lucky stars my movie taste got better! And man did this movie age as fine as NSYNC, calling people "dog", and that weird stilted slow-mo effect that thankfully died. I have never seen a movie so dated in early 2000s (there's no better word for it) embarassment it's almost a marvel. Try and watch this movie without 1. Rolling your eyes, 2. Facepalming, 3. Drinking heavily, and PS. I've failed miserably at this game. I'm almost 1000% certain this movie was made to sell a soundtrack, and to be perfectly honest I only heard one song that was not white noise to my ears and I don't even know the name of it! Also fair warning, this might be my longest review yet due to MASSIVE retrospective viewing of the series, me, and my better ideas for the movie. So where do I truly begin? Well....how about the good stuff though brief they are. I actually gave Matthew Lillard a lot of shit for this movie but honestly looking back and giving him some real love for his voice over work recently in the series, he is a awesome Shaggy. He really does get the character down and his interactions with Scooby are easily the best part of the movie (except for that one scene that shall not be named), he's funny, gets the character incredibly well, and has the most believable and enjoyable relationship with Scooby than any other human being in the movie. I dig the use of practical sets and effects and they only really use CG if it's absolutely necessary, and I can't honestly give good grief over how Scoob looks, they adapted a 2D cartoon character who's very exaggerated and cartoony with the best CG they had at that time so they tried their best to make it work so I shall not shun the look of Scooby. However! The rest of the CGI euuuggghhh it needed more render time. Oh and that voodoo dude was absolutely great, it's like he knew what movie he was in and decided to just say whatever, and yet it's really funny and truthful at the same time, I wish we saw him more. Goodbye voodoo dude, you were a true joy in this movie! The true shining star of this whole movie from beginning to end is Linda Cardellini as Velma. Now if you'll excuse me I will shamelessly praise her for the next few longwinded sentences. Oh lord...we thank you for this actress and the outstanding potrayal of a lesser recognized and beloved character. She is glorious, she's witty and clever, she's funny and actually gives her all to this character, and oh sweet celestial beings she is ******* gorgeous!! I mean, damn Velms! Lord have mercy, someone get me a glass of ice water I'm about to overheat, mm mmm mmm. But enough about that, let's talk about the ehhhh things. Okay Mr. Screenwriter who if you look him up you will be dumbfounded as I am, I understand the changes you did for Daphne. I can even slightly appreciate it but you still done ****** it up! Okay so they get the supreme asskicking queen herself Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, literally off the set of Buffy and get her to be a black belt trained Daphne who is tired of being the damsel in distress. Which I personally never got, I mean you go back to watching those shows and honestly Daphne doesn't get kidnapped that much, hell no one gets taken captive more than Shaggy and Scooby so....whoops I guess! But they ruin her character. Now let's be real here, even as a hardcore Scooby-Doo fan, there's not that much character to the gang. You have the leader, the girl next door, the brains, and the comic relief. Now granted they built on that through now literally 50 years of show (wow), but they make her this ditzy valley girl almost useless chick. She kicks a door down and beats up one guy. Move aside Ellen Ripley, Xena, Wonder Woman, there's a new sherrif in these here parts!! Good intentions but absolute garbage delivery. Fred is bland, no disrespect to the actor, he just didn't have that much going for him but I will say that little foot stamp in the woods; priceless. And now we get to the bad. Joy of joys. Story time! So we pick up on the tail end of a mystery, the gang just got another crook and the police still condone vigilante justice from sleuth detectives maybe because they were endorsed by Pamela fraking Anderson!! I am soooo not making that up, Pamela Anderson is in this movie, probably just to reassure the audience that the nails in the coffin have been properly set. She's not even playing a character, it's just Pam as Pam in a nonsensical and completely pointless cameo. Whatever. Moving on. And are you ready for some buuullshit? The gang then decide they quit. Huuuhhhh?? Wha-wha-why? There is no setup to it, they're just like, "Op I quit, peace bitch!" and you have so not even earned this you don't even get a participation trophy. So they quit for mysterious reasons that even the screenwriter couldn't solve and we flash to 3 years later. Fred has been on a book tour, Velma has been working with NASA, Daphne has been training with Ra's Al Ghul in the Himalayas or some shit, and Shag and Scoob have been well...Shag and Scoob. And they all get invited to a, let me get this straight, a theme park based on some abstract weird creepy shit that I have no idea what it is, that is run by Rowan Atkinson who is completely wasted in his part (we'll get to him later) with help from an admittedly kinda creepy and memorable right hand man, AND a luchadore wrestler.....okay. And it turns out the theme park is secretly a cult where they summon a more fake looking CG bunny from Donnie Darko who can't survive in sunlight because of the Mogwai gene in them so they possess people's bodies as like this far out new sunscreen trick, are you with me so far? Oh and they steal people's souls like Shang Tsung did I mention that? This gets complicated so fast and the payoff is so not worth it! And this is where the movie completely falls off the deep end because it is so not Scooby-Doo. Now you might be saying no shit Dude they're fighting demons, but they've done supernatural stuff before and it worked in many ways. Witch's Ghost for example, they fought the ghost of a witch with the help of my taste in women-uh, I mean Thorn and that was awesome! And I can pin it down to 2, maybe 3 big points. The threat was dangerous, and these bunny demons are so not a problem and hold no threat, they are more slapsticky and cartoonish than Scooby. Now I'm not saying comic relief can't be done, there was a Wizard Of Oz reference and them threatning to baste a giant turkey in The Witch's Ghost but here there's no menace in any respect except that tatted up dude but he doesn't really do much and the comedy is insufferable with these creatures. Second, the whole reveal is the fact that the person who wants to summon demons, take over the world, and envelop the Earth in 10,000 years of darkness, is Scrappy-Doo. Hwhat??? And guess why? Come on guess. Throw out anything. You ready? You're not but here we go. He does alllll of that to get revenge on Mystery Inc. for dumping him because he was an annoying ****. News flash! You already won 3 years before this potdream began. Mystery Inc. disbanded, they quit, they left, they were done so may I ask whyyy you're doing this?? My head hurts now. Some would call this movie a mixed bag but there's so much stupid caked on layer after layer after layer, it just fails. You get a comedic actor like Rowan Atkinson and give him nothing to do, he got one laugh out of me and that is a crime in my eyes. And do you know who they wanted to get for the part? Tim Curry! And he said no! For the reason it had Scrappy in it because he's a big fan of the series (And come on no one likes Scrappy, even Cartoon Network throws Scrappy under the eighteen wheeler.) that's why he gave it 120 beautiful percent as Ben Ravencroft, but I suspect he didn't like the script either and got out. Oh my God, I almost forgot this and you need to see it with your own eyes. Okay go to the IMDB page of this movie and click on the images tab. Not only is there essentially an appreciation volley of Linda Cardellini but the very first image is not from the movie. I dare even say what you all will think, and state it is from a porn parody because well the site name is um...what's the word? Obvious. And that is clearly not Linda in the picture soooo, yeah. That was just something I noticed and had to tell you cause that got a massive kick out of me. Wow, how did we sink this low? To me, this hurts, to others it's just another subpar/bad movie. Scooby-Doo is my favorite cartoon ever, it means the world to me, pretty much made me the person I am today, and to see it go through so many phases and most of them being good it hurts. There's material you can work with here, build on the characters, you can keep the theme park premise but drop this bullshit demon stuff cause it really does not work in any way. Keep Velma the way she is, keep Shaggy and Scooby the way they are, give Fred....anything, give Daphne more than a breaking tradition damsel trope. Keep it simple in terms of plot, and complex in terms of character. I can always love you Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated. But this movie.....they betray me, they didn't keep their promise. They trick me, and, I don't care anymore. And we might as well do the second movie tomorrow cause I'm not talking about this series ever again for God's sake what the fu-