What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie has more intense, scary
special effects than you'll find in the cartoon Scooby-Doo
features. The characters are in frequent peril, though no one
gets hurt. There is mild drug humor (as "Pass the Dutchie"
plays on the soundtrack, what appears to be marijuana smoke
turns out to be something else) and some vulgar jokes and
graphic bathroom humor. The girls wear very skimpy clothes.
Families can talk about why the friends broke up and why they got back together. They might also want to talk about what has made Scooby and his pals so enduringly popular over the years.
Common Sense Media Review
It's trickier than you might think to translate a
Saturday-morning
cartoon program into a live-action movie. The first
challenge is figuring out who your audience is going to be. Is
it the little kids who watch the cartoon now and want to see
every detail replicated on the big screen (like the live-action
101 Dalmatians
)? Or is it the former little kids who want to see their
memories of the show through a filter that is part retro, part
camp, part irony (like the
Brady Bunch
movies) and be able to recognize Scrappy-Doo, Pamela
Anderson, and Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath on sight? There is not a
lot of overlap, and yet this movie tries to reach both. It ends
up somewhere between a live-action cartoon that is much too
scary for most kids and
Saturday Night Live
sketch that goes on too long for most teens.
The Mystery Machine crew has just discovered the secret of the ghost who captured Daphne (it's a man in a mask!), when their egos collide and they decide to go their separate ways. Two years later, they find out that each of them has been hired by Mr. Mondavarious ( Rowan Atkinson), whose Spooky Island theme park is a little spookier than he had in mind. Fred, Velma, and Daphne try to solve the mystery on their own, but find that they have to work together to find…well, this time it's not a man in a mask, exactly.
The young stars have the voices down perfectly and do the best they can to bring the characters to life, but that only emphasizes how sketchy and shallow the cartoon characterization really is. Like the Smurfs, the Scooby-Doo characters each have only one basic attribute: Fred ( Freddie Prinze, Jr.) is self-centered, Daphne ( Sarah Michelle Gellar) wants to be more than the girl who has to be rescued all the time, Velma ( Linda Cardellini) is the brainy girl, and Shaggy ( Matthew Lillard) is the always-hungry slacker. Prinze, who will someday find a movie that will show off his considerable talent, has his best moments when Fred becomes something like a hip-hop zombie. Lillard has his best moments anytime he is not challenging Scooby to a flatulence and burping contest.
Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the original Scooby cartoons like Scooby Classics (including the very first episode) and others in the extensive straight-to-DVD series, including Scooby-Doo: Pirates Ahoy! . For more kid crime-solving, try Nancy Drew or even Spy Kids .
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
