Thursday, June 13, 2002
The movie's scenarists should have spent more time writing a plot and less on the less-than-special CGI effects.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
In the annals of rotten, totally unnecessary movies, "Scooby-Doo" takes the cake -- or is that the Purina Chow? How anyone in their right mind could have thought that the world was clamoring for a live-action version of the 1970s Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon show is a mystery.
Didn't they see the grosses for the similarly 'toon-derived -- but infinitely better -- "Josie and the Pussycats"? Warner Brothers, who flushed somewhere between $80 million to $90 million down the corporate pipes for this stinker, had better get ready to spill some major red ink in their next financial statement.
Sitting through "Scooby" is like being trapped inside some dinky county fair's haunted house ride with a busload of delinquent third graders for 90 excruciating minutes. To the best of my recollection, the original TV show had one story-line that was repeated ad nauseam: a Great Dane with a speech impediment and his oh-so-groovy pals travel around in a psychedelic van called "The Mystery Machine" behaving like hippie ghostbusters.
While I suppose it's admirable that scenarists James Gunn and Craig Titley wanted to be as faithful to their source material as possible, it would have been even nicer if they'd actually bothered writing an actual plot. Like so many big-ticket movies these days, all the behind-the-scenes ingenuity went into creating the CGI effects, which aren't even all that special. Scooby himself looks more like a hologram of a dog than an actual pooch.
Here's the story
Scooby and the gang are tricked into visiting a threadbare theme park called Spooky Island by its duplicitous owner Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson of "Mr. Bean" fame) where their job is to determine whether the place is poltergeist-infested. Mondavarious' joint turns out to be the front for an evil brainwashing cult that's selected Scooby as its human, er, canine sacrifice.
If the Scooby-snuffing ritual is enacted, creepy spectral creatures will rule the earth for 10,000 years. Will the gang be able to put aside their petty differences to rescue the imperiled Scooby? Can Freddie Prinze, Jr.'s acting career survive yet another box-office flop? See, and you thought Hollywood movies were afraid of asking existential questions.
With the exception of Atkinson (wasted on a nothing role), the cast is as second-rate as everything else here. As the ascot-adorned Fred, Prinze Jr. is his usual hapless self; Sarah Michelle Gellar plays Daphne like a brainless version of her cult fave vampire slayer Buffy; and Matthew Lillard makes Shaggy even more annoying than Casey Kasem's cartoon incarnation. The less said about an embarrassing cameo by professional exhibitionist Pamela Anderson the better.
Poor Raja Gosnell. The former Chris Columbus prot & eacute;g & eacute; may have destroyed a promising directorial career ("Never Been Kissed," "Big Momma's House") in one fell swoop with this criminally stupid kiddie piffle. Scooby-Doo, how could you?
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.