Ruh-oh Scoob!
Scoob! (2020) tells the tale of Scooby Dooby Doo and the rest of the Mystery Inc gang when evil villain, Dastardly Dick, threatens to open the door to Cerberus, the three headed dog, in plans to take over the world.
Written By Eyal Podell, Adam Sztykiel, Matt Lieberman, Derek Elliot, Jack Donaldson and Jonathon E. Steward and Directed By Tony Cervone, it pains me how this many people writing and working on such an iconic cartoon character could still manage to ruin his legacy.
The Film....
Let’s start off by sayin “Zoinks” as that basically sums up my entire reaction for the entire runtime of this animated “comedy” movie. It really was appalling how many pop culture references they crammed into this to appeal to a more Gen Z audience, look at me showing my age now.
The movie starts off pretty strong and shows us how Shaggy and Scooby meet in a really sweet and almost innocent way. We see them bond more as children and eventually grown up through what was probably the only positive thing about this movie in the recreation of the classic cartoons opening title screen. From then on in it only goes downhill and doesn’t get any better sadly.
The film suffers from a lot of things, one being the awful direction they went with the film. Scooby Doo has always been about the monsters and the gang working together to get out of scrapes and solving the mystery’s as a team. In SCOOB! however, they go down the direction of superhero‘s and space travel which is just absurd and totally the opposite of what Scooby Doo is about. Sure they tried something new but for me I feel they only did that to cater to the Gen Z audience as they love superhero’s and space and Warner Bros know this idea sells which is quite telling about them to be honest.
Another problem I had with this movie was the weird and confusing cameo from that of TV’s infamous and “much loved” talent show judge, Mr Simon Cowell. No words will express my emotions towards this cameo and how weird and misplaced it was.
A question that I would like answering is what correlation does Dastardly Dick from the classic Wacky Racers (1968) have with Scooby Doo? Is it because they have similar characters? Let me know on my social channels.
The Cast....
Voicing our Mystery Inc gang we have Will Forte (BookSmart,The Lego Movie) playing Shaggy, Frank Welker (Toy Story 3, Shrek) playing Scooby Dooby Doo, Zac Efron (Bad Neighbours 2, High School Musical) playing Fred, Amanda Seyfried (Mean Gorls, Mamma Mia) playing Daphne and finally Gina Rodriguez (Annihilation, Deepwater Horizon) playing Velma.
Others include Mark Wahlberg (Ted, Spenser Confidential) playing Blue Falcon, Jason Isaacs (Fury, Cars 2) playing Dick Dastardly and finally Kiersey Clemons (DOPE, Bad Neighbours 2) playing Dee Dee Skyes.
For me there was a severe lack of Matthew Lillard, who played Shaggy in the 2002 live action version of Scooby-Doo and since has become an icon for the role and many agree he is the embodiment of Shaggy so it baffles me why they would replace him with someone who I think sounded nothing like Shaggy and didn’t voice the character at all well.
To Conclude....
SCOOB! (2020) starts off with the right idea and stays true to the iconic characters roots but soon dissolves into a Gen Z party full of cringe worthy pop culture references and has really dry and dad joke induced humour.
Rating: ⭐️/5
SCOOB! (2020) is now available to rent on demand at home on all good streaming services.
Remember to let me know the correlation between Wacky Races (1968) and Scooby Doo on my social channels....
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