Scooby-Doo (2002) Review

 

Scooby-Doo (2002)

Scooby-Doo follows Scooby and the gang, who are brought together to solve a mystery on Spooky Island, 2 years after splitting up.

Call it what you will—nostalgia, just pure fun, whatever—there is something about Mystery Inc.’s first live outing that is incredibly alluring. Written by James Gunn, this was the first real attempt to market Scooby-Doo towards adults. It’s sexy, downright inappropriate, and just barely missed an R rating but honestly though, I think it works really well. There’s a certain goofy charm to it that really captures that cartoon’y quality of the show we all love, with the updated early 2000s aesthetic of the film really adding to just how silly everything is, even if it is a little dated.

Even with my bias though, you have to admit, there’s quite a few areas where this film missteps and thats mainly in the CGI department. In and around the early 2000s, after Phantom Menace, any and everyone wanted to try their hands at it, some more successful than others. Let’s just say Scooby-Doo wasn’t, with a mixture of the limitations of the time and just flat out bad special effects coming in to play to make the final fiasco with an enlarged Scrappy-Doo a bit of a CGI cluster fuck. 

The cast redeems most any issue this movie could ever have though, starring Isla Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, Neil Fanning, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Linda Cardellini, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Matthew Lillard. Lillard easily won us over in Scream 6 years earlier, but it was his run at Shaggy that forever cemented him as the best Shaggy, a role that will be damn near impossible to think of anyone else in. The chemistry among the rest of the cast is dynamite as well, and watching Prinze, Gellar, Cardellini, and Lillard interact and bounce off one another was amazing.

Scooby-Doo, directed by Raja Gosnell, amidst all it’s glaring flaws, is one of those rare movies where its flaws somehow make it more admirable. The tone, electricity, and silliness of the classic cartoons was brought to life in such a fun and entertaining way, that any corny flaws just add to the cartoon-y quality that transitioned so well to the big screen. 

7.4/10