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ScOoBy-DoO
Studio: Warner Brothers
Year: 2002
Rated: PG
Film Length: 86 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 16X9 Enhanced Widescreen (1.85:1)
Subtitles: English & Spanish
"Scooby Doo...Where are you?!"
Not having seen Scooby-Doo theatrically,
I had heard some pretty bad things about the film.
After all, Live-action adaptations of cartoons
have never always succeeded well. While The
Flintstones looked great on the screen, it
suffered somewhat from a lackluster storyline.
This is pretty much the same case with Scooby-Doo.
Here is a film that is remarkably an exact
transposition of the cartoon, with set designs
that are breathtaking. From there, however, the
film goes downhill fast.
As the film opens we discover The Mystery Machine
crew has just discovered the secret of the ghost
who captured Daphne. Just like it always happened
in cartoon, the ghost turns out to be a man in a
mask. It's just another day solving mysteries
for Fred (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), Daphne (Sarah
Michelle Gellar), Velma (Linda Cardellini) and
Shaggy (Matthew Lillard), and of course...Scooby.
With such considerable crime-solving talent, you
would expect that sooner or later their egos
would start to collide. This is exactly what
happens and they all 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. The gang
decides to put their differences aside and be
a team once again.
Though the film certainly tries to replicate the
70s cartoon with its cartoonish-styled sets, the
film ultimately suffers from an awful script that
includes its share of fart and burp jokes that
will just make your eyes roll. Director Raja
Gosnell tries his best to make "Scooby-Doo" as
faithful as possible. The costumes are exactly
right, and the character imitations are almost
dead-on. The film's poorest performance is of
Freddie Prince's imitation of Fred. And while
Scooby's CGI animation looks out of place, it
somehow works. The big problem here is that the
film is awfully noisy, and other than a terrific
opening sequence that gives us a ghost chase
on skateboard, the action goes nowhere. It
had to be tough for the filmmakers to decide
whether they were going to appease the new
generation of kids or the former generation of
little kids who want to see their memories of
the show through a sieve that is part retro and
part campiness. Unfortunately, the film
delivers more for the little kids than us
big ones.
How is the transfer?
They don't come much better than this! Here is
a transfer that looks as if it was lifted from the
pages of a comic book, filled with neon-colors
of pink, green, orange, red and purple that leap
out in scene after scene. The film actually looks
like a live-action cartoon. It's wonderful to
see such an intensity of color represented with no
oversaturation, video noise or film grain. In fact,
I was hard pressed to find any imperfections in
this transfer. Picture quality is very solid and
certainly demo-quality for anyone that wants to
show off the color ranges of their home theater
system.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix was sort of a letdown.
Don't get me wrong, the sound is very robust and
bass-heavy in the front channels. There's also
very strong LFE response that had my subwoofer
providing room-shaking response to every crash
and thud that occurred on screen. The problem I
found is that this film is way too noisy in the
front channels, giving very little sense of
direction to the rest of the channels. Effects
noises get lost very easy. In fact, except for
the film's score, I never really sensed much
happening in the rear channels until the film's
final sacrificial scene. It's almost as if there
was too much noise and nowhere to go.
Special Features
Scooby-Doo arrives in separate WIDESCREEN
and FULL FRAME editions -- so be very careful which
version you are picking up. You'll immediately
be struck by the neon-green packaging that the DVD
comes in. As usual, I managed to scratch the snapper
case trying to pry off the multiple security stickers.
Popping in the DVD brings you to a drum-kickin'
Main Menu screen that has live-action Scooby
rollickin' around a cartoon Tiki set that contains
the menu commands.
There are two separate commentaries recorded
for this DVD. The first is a filmmakers commentary
that features Director Raja Gosnell, Producers
Richard Suckle and Charles Roven. The second is
a cast commentary featuring Matthew Lillard
(Shaggy), Freddie Prince Jr. (Fred), Sarah
Michelle Gellar (Daphne) and Linda Cardellini
(Velma). I gave the cast commentary a listen,
and actually its rather a fun considering
that everyone is sitting together having a great
time with each other. We learn that Sarah was
away doing Buffy through some of the filming.
The cast members were pretty bummed out when
they discovered that Spooky Island was nothing
but sand dunes. All the added rides and its
surroundings were done completely in CGI. You
can tell how impressed everyone was with the
immense sets they preformed on, as so much of
their commentary is dedicated to talking about
all its moving parts. The guys and gals have no
problem mocking on each other's performance --
especially Freddie Prince's dancing sequence
inside the sacrificial cave. This is the sort
of commentary that works best on DVD -- throw
a bunch of young actors in a room and let them
go at each other.
There is 13 minutes worth of Alternate Scenes
presented on this DVD. Some of the material include...
* An alternate opening to the film which introduces
the Mystery Machine gang in their original animated
form. After an initial screening, the filmmakers
decided that the cartoon really wasn't needed to
introduce the characters to the audience.
* Flashback sequences that occur as the group
meets in the airport. These flashbacks show that
their lives haven't been as exactly exciting as
they made it out to be.
* A musical montage sequence that introduced the
characters and audience to Spooky Island.
* Velma's song and dance number atop a grand piano.
* A brainwashed and bikini-clad Velma acting a
little out of character in a girl's locker room.
* Daphne losing her spirit as a creature inhabits
her body. A very exciting visual piece that proved
to be a little too intense for younger viewers.
For the most part, these deleted scenes are quite
good. It's a shame many of them had to be removed.
They are all in finished form, and can be watched
with or without commentary from Director Raja Gosnell.
Unmasking The Mystery behind Scooby-Doo
takes us behind the scenes as we watch the cast
go through the motions before the camera. As
star Sarah Michelle Gellar puts it, "It's been
an incredibly physical role in incredibly high
boots". With a split screen to their cartoon
alter-egos, each of the cast members have their
turn to talk about how much fun it was to play
their respective roles, as they all tried to make
something great even better. Director Raja Gosnell
obviously had a great time with his cast, as we
watch him try to bring the best out of his characters.
This featurette also includes an interview with
the cartoon's creators, Joseph Barbera and Iwao
Takamoto as we learn a little about the development
of the original TV cartoon that all of us fell in
love with. Visual Effects Producer Kurt Williams
and Visual Effects Supervisor Peter Crosman talk
about the massive challenge of bringing Scooby to
the live-action screen. To better help us understand
how it is done, we are treated to several Pre-
visualizations of the animation process. It's
funny to watch the actors working around animation
that hasn't already been done yet. I think you
will find this featurette to be rather fun!
(length: approx. 21 minutes)
Scary Places is a small featurette that
takes us through the massive set designs of this
film that mimic the original cartoons so well.
Producer Charles Rowen calls this the most
ambitious project he has ever been involved with.
It's just so cool to take this guided tour of
the many awesome cartoon sets and I think you'll
be just as impressed as I was with all the
detailed design.
(length: approx. 4 minutes)
Production Designer Bill Boes introduces us
to the The Mystery Van (aka Mystery Machine),
citing that 55 different designs of the van were
planned until the final one was selected. Matthew
Lillard (Shaggy) gives us a back door tour of
all the van's luxuries that include a television
and shag carpeting.
(length: approx. 1 minute)
Fist and kick fighting combined with wirework
make up Daphne's Fight Scene, shown
through storyboards and direction from Stunt
co-ordinator Guy Norris. Here's a behind-the-camera
view of how these difficult stunt sequences were
performed with some interesting reaction from
Sarah Michelle Gellar.
(lenth: approx. 2.2 minutes)
This is pretty cool! An arcade game called
Spooky Island Arcade Challenge. It's one
of those arcade claw machines that pick up goodies
from its floor. All you hafta do is help Scooby
and Shaggy answer a few questions in order to
collect the proper items from the claw machine's
floor. The game's a lot of fun, evoking several
cool responses from a correct or incorrect answer.
Better yet, You can play ONE PLAYER or TWO PLAYER.
The film's Music Video, Land of a Million
Drums, is included in its entirety.
There's also DVD-ROM content that I did
not have time to explore, but I imagine it contains
all sorts of web-enabled features.
Final Thoughts
Whether you enjoy Scooby-Doo or not
will most likely depend on your age group. For
the young ones, this is going to be a terrific
DVD that will stand up to repeated viewing.
For those of thus that grew up with Scooby,
getting through one viewing may be difficult.
Release Date: October 11, 2002
