Scoob!

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Much like with 'Onward' and 'Trolls: World Tour', 'Scoob!' was to be released in theaters for the family to enjoy on the big screen. It's another case of coming straight to streaming, and questioning whether the original theatrical price (or more) is worth paying to watch it on our small screens. That decision seems up in the air right now, as people are extremely split on this movie, and that actually includes me.

'Scoob!' starts out with a cute, fun origin story where we see how Shaggy (Iain Armitage/Will Forte) met Scooby (Frank Welker) and the rest of the mystery gang - Fred, the "tank" (Pierce Gagnon/Zac Efron); Velma, the "brains" (Ariana Greenblatt/Gina Rodriguez); and Daphne, the "people person" (Mckenna Grace/Amanda Seyfried). Together, they solve their first mystery, old school Scooby-Doo style, decide to become good friends and keep doing this sort of thing.

Fast-forward over the opening credits, and we see the gang 10 years later. They make a business deal with a certain celebrity cameo I don't really wanna spoil, but Shaggy and Scooby are excluded from the plan, as they don't have much to bring to the table. Distraught, Scooby and Shaggy go bowling, only to run into an army of small robots called Rottens who chase them right into an... "abduction beam", if you will.

This beam belongs to the Falcon Fury, where we meet the original Blue Falcon's son, Brian Crown (Mark Wahlberg), along with his trusty sidekick, Dynomutt (Ken Jeong) and pilot, Dee Dee Skyes (Kiersey Clemons). They reveal that the sinister Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) is after Scooby for his own selfish purposes. This all leads to an... interesting plan which adds to Scooby's overall lore, but you have to wonder if it's a bit too much. Eventually the rest of the Mystery Team also gets involved, and the film does become a collaboration of lesser-known Barbara characters.

So, I'll start with the bad. The biggest problem I had was with some of the voice acting. If you've ever been a deep fan of these Hanna Barbara toons, a couple of major mistakes really stand out. First up, Dynomutt was originally the bumbling fool while Falcon was the straight-edge hero. That said, I can reluctantly let it pass, since in this case it seemed to be going for a sort of role reversal thing, and the Falcon here is the original Falcon's son. I guess I got what they were going for, but it will be irksome to some old school fans.

The worst of it is when they come across Captain Caveman, voiced by Tracy Morgan, and everything you loved about Cap Cave is completely thrown out the window. It was just grating to me that Captain Caveman may as well have been renamed Captain Morgan, and not in a good, booze-related way. It was just Tracy Morgan wearing a Captain Caveman costume, and I kinda hated it. This is bothersome to any parents watching this with their kids, trying to find the nostalgia in all of it while it totally misses the mark.

Getting to the good, though, perhaps my favorite parts revolved around the Mystery Team. Whenever Fred, Daphne and Velma are on screen, it definitely plays a bit more with the parental humor which makes up for some of the nostalgic disappointment mentioned earlier. There were actually a few jokes and gags here that got a genuine laugh from me, but they are unfortunately met with an equal amount that fall flat. The humour is a combination of clever jokes and annoying slapstick, and it makes you wonder who they were really making this for at times.

I will say that I was actually quite impressed here and there at certain moments of prediction. There's a whole lot of "here comes a cliche" only to be surprised that they didn't follow through at the last minute. It's a relief that so much of it wasn't necessarily predictable, but with that said, these surprises are more a matter of "Oh, they didn't do it after all" as opposed to "Woah! I can't believe they did that instead!" But then they make decisions like they did at the very end, where there's a fake-out that genuinely bothered me. It's one of those endings that almost kills a film, because the lead-up is all actually pretty solid and even kinda mature.

As far as I think, unless you have some kids who are chomping at the bit, and you're paying for a generously filled house to watch it, it's just not worth it. For adults like myself, there's some good moments here and there, but the screw-ups on familiar characters are kinda glaring, and it doesn't play into your nostalgia quite like you want it to. Again, these characters weren't broken, and they didn't need fixing. At the end of the day, it just made me appreciate the old cartoons much more. If you wanna see it, but you're not in a rush, I'd just as soon wait for it to cost less.

​3/5

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