Scoob!

I watched Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? when I was a kid, but I can’t remember anything from those cartoons other than the main characters – and even the characters are a bit hazy. I watched the first live action movie featuring the horribly computer generated Scooby Doo when it came out on video. It was a fun movie, yet forgettable. And that’s what I really think is Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc.’s problem is: They are a bit forgettable. I didn’t have much expectations of this reboot.

There is a plot in this film, but it doesn’t really matter – and it is good that the plot didn’t matter because what was there wasn’t very good. The movie’s story has to do with a maniacal Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) looking for giant dog skulls which, along with Scooby Doo (Frank Welker) are used to open some gates to a large treasure. There’s also a cute opening sequence (which was basically shown in a shorter form in the trailers) that serves as an origin story for Shaggy (Will Forte) and Scooby’s relationship. Shaggy and Scooby Doo join Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg) and Dynomutt (Ken Jeong) to foil Dick Dastardly’s scheme.

There’s a side plot about Mystery Inc. trying to get funding to grow their business, but that side plot starts and is forgotten pretty quickly. That being said, the story was enough to barely carry the film along because the movie moves at a rapid pace. There were quite a few funny pop culture references and there many laugh aloud jokes in the movie (including a questionable Tindr joke inside a kid’s film). There are also some cute robots that Dick Dastardly employs that are reminiscent of the Minions from the Despicable Me franchise.

The voice acting in the film was good, while there are some recognizable names attached to the film (Zac Efron, Gina Rodriguez, Amanda Seyfried, Tracy Morgan, Christina Hendricks and Henry Winkler), I couldn’t recognize the voices at all – a good thing, because usually when a famous voice is used, I get distracted. The one voice I wanted to call out was Jason Isaac, who I don’t know if it was intentional on Isaac’s part, but he did a fantastic imitation of John Lithgow. Simon Cowell makes a funny cameo in the film as does Ira Glass.

In the end, the film was an entertaining 90 minutes. It is colorful, fun and funny. I wouldn’t specifically pay money to see it, but it did show up on HBO Max, so I gave it a try.

Watched at home streamed on HBO Max.