Scoob – A Painful Animated Franchise Reboot

In an age of reboots and reimaginings, the Scooby Doo franchise is apparently next in line with Scoob. The real question is why now? Perhaps it was to sell more merchandise because at the end of the day, regardless of whether the film is good or not, the film will still generate a fair share of merchandise sales. The character of Scooby Doo is still a draw and with a new animation style this time around, it will still find an audience but maybe not for the right reasons. Though the film will surely appeal to younger audiences, this film is by no means a Scooby Doo story (which was kind of sad in and of itself). The animation is admittedly impressive, however, the film is simply a 90+ minute bore chalk full of lazy, derivative, and unfunny humor alongside forced and cringe-worthy references in an aimless attempt to make the film feel hip and current with older audiences while incoherently trying to force some sort of shared Scooby Doo cinematic universe. The problem with all of that was that it was simply hard to care about any of it which will make it a tough watch for many.

The best way to describe Scoob is perhaps a snowball that gets increasingly worse as the film went on. The film served as an origin story for the Mystery Machine gang. Shaggy (Forte), Velma (Rodriguez), Daphne (Seyfried), and Fred (Efron) would meet at a young age and immediately hit it off (a film about all the characters as kids would have been a much more interesting one) but the true relationship that centered the film was that of Shaggy and his fateful dog Scooby Doo (Welker). Unfortunately, the film failed to get that right as any emotion was lost in the shuffle of its mess of a story. Shaggy and Scooby found themselves having to prove their worth as their positions within Mystery Inc. were put into question. They as well as the rest of the Mystery Machine gang found themselves part of an adventure full of other ridiculous characters that felt more like a superhero film than an actual mystery that was too ridiculous to describe.

Being a film primarily catered for children, Scoob was on the predictable side for which nothing that happens here should come as that much of a surprise to anyone, thus eliminating any possibility of fun, but the lack of any kind of stakes whatsoever also made it incredibly dull alongside it being painfully unfunny. In terms of positives besides the animation, the voice acting was actually quite good, from Forte, Rodriguez, Seyfried, Efron, and Welker as Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, Fred, and Scooby respectively. Meanwhile. Mark Wahlberg, Jason Isaacs, and Ken Jeong stand out in supporting roles. It was just a shame that the material was so dreadful.

As mentioned, the story is far from being over after Scoob so hopefully the next adventure will feature better material as despite how this film may have gone, the filmmakers should scooby-doo continue as there is still potential for the series. At the end of the day, with times like this, all we need are distractions and when it comes to ones for the kids, this isn’t the worst choice but others will be better off with something else.

*still courtesy of Warner Bros.*

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.