'Scoob!' review: A mystery strictly for kids
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
If you’re looking to relive the joy and magic of watching classic “Scooby Doo” episodes through a 2020 lens, you may want to think twice before watching the new animated film “Scoob!”. It does little to update the formula of a bold mystery-solving team chasing ghosts with their equally curious canine. Instead, it turns that template into a mash-up of pop culture gags and obsolete characters nobody asked for.
The head-scratchers come early in “Scoob!” as we get a frivolous backstory of how our two main characters met. Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) is a precocious puppy who can communicate with humans, and Shaggy (Will Forte) hasn’t gone full pothead yet but the early signs are definitely there. It’s an awkward prologue to start the film and things continue to get bumpy as “Scoob!” catches us up to the rest of the young detectives of Mystery Incorporated. Fred (Zac Efron), Daphne (Amanda Seyfried) and Velma (Gina Rodriguez) all seem to love Scooby-Doo as much as they love solving mysteries, but we rarely get to see them solve any significant enigmas. Much of the film is spent on gags that will fly over kids’ heads and make adults groan (whoever thought a Simon Cowell callback in 2020 would work has some explaining to do).
Another needless addition to “Scoob’s!” running time is the film’s insistence on piggybacking off of Marvel and “The Avengers” by having the mystery gang team up with other cartoon heroes from the shared Hanna-Barbera universe. It’s a clunky and uninspired idea on paper, and seeing it incorporated into the finished product is much worse. Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg), Dynomutt (Ken Jeong) and Captain Caveman (Tracy Morgan) are just some of the names that will make collective heads do a double take of confusion. They’re set up in the film to be important and strong beacons of the past but instead weigh things down by taking the fun out of what should’ve been straight-forward family entertainment. Menacing robots and a galactic finale also come into play, so it goes without saying that you should expect a few awkward “Star Wars” references to keep things relevant.
“Scoob!” is bypassing theaters and debuting exclusively through video on demand platforms, which is a tempting idea for parents looking for a virtual babysitter. The film is innocuous for adults and has just enough entertainment to please young ones. This is not the “Scooby-Doo” you remember; in fact, it’s a watered-down and alien version of that cartoon series, but for younger audiences looking for a quick fix of harmless fun it will definitely get the job done.
Rating: C
“Scoob!” is now available to stream on video on demand.
