16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Expect Too Much & You'll Enjoy It As Mindless Fluff, October 28, 2002
The key to enjoying SCOOBY DOO is not to expect too much. The producers have billed the film as half hommage, half parody; in truth, it isn't really close enough to the original cartoon to be called hommage and it really doesn't go far enough to be called parody, and as usual Hollywood makes the mistake of trying to cover up the script's inadequacies with big-budget production values and expensive but actually so-so special effects. All the same, the film does have its moments. The story finds Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy splitting up due to ego conflicts--and then being unexpectedly reunited when the owner of a teen resort called "Spooky Island" invites them in to find out why his guests arrive as normal teens and then depart as, well, ZOMBIES.
The script is fairly mundane, but it does have a few zingers, as when Velma says "Let's get jinky with it!" And although the cast is a mixed bag, they work hard to bring it off. Freddie Prinze is wildly miscast as Fred and Sarah Michelle Gellar is not an ideal Daphne, but they play with tremendous energy; Matthew Lillard and Linda Cardellini, however, are so dead on target with their performances that they create an amazing sense of deja vu. As for Scooby Doo, he is (of course) a computerized animation. And so are most of the monsters the gang encounters on Spooky Island. Although it works reasonably well, it isn't anything to write home about.
I would recommend that parents preview the film before unleashing it upon their kids; some younger children may be unnerved by the monsters. The DVD comes with a number of extras that include some cut scenes--and they offer an interesting contrast with the film, for they are very satirical. Seeing them left me with the feeling that the film would have been much more entertaining if those scenes had been left in and the whole thing had been done with the same bite. As it is--SCOOBY DOO is neither a great film nor a memorable film. But we're all occasionally in the mood for some mindless fluff, and it fills that niche very well indeed.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sscooby Ddooby Doo, May 22, 2003
A Kid's Review
Entertaining. A good film for children like me. The best scooby-doo movie that I've ever seen. A funny movie and a cool one.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not As Good As It's Supposed to Be, February 21, 2003
I thought that this was supposed to be like the cartoons but when I saw it, it was not as good as I thought it would be. For one thing, Freddie Prinze, Jr. is not Fred. The movie was not that scary and had little humor. While you can sense the friendship between Shaggy and Scooby Doo, their scenes got a little bit weird. As the movie got on, the mystery started to get confusing. All in all, this was not a very enjoyable film.
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