“Let’s get jinkie with it.” Yes, folks, this is actual dialogue from the movie that is spouted by the “smartest” of the characters, Velma. The characters are poorly cast, including Daphne, who, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, looks nothing like her animated counterpart, Freddy, played by the atrocious actor Freddie Prinze Jr. has little command or charisma so it’s hard to take him seriously at all. Matthew Lillard is good as Shaggy but fails to gives the squeaky voice that Shaggy provides in the cartoons. Scooby is poorly animated and just looks weird and nothing like the original dog. At times he gives these odd expressions which made me furrow my brows a lot.
I never liked the cartoons. I found them to be ridiculous, repetitive and dull so it was typical I went into this with very low expectations. But, alas, low expectations are what ultimately saved this movie, helping me to enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would. What I liked about this was, it doesn’t take itself seriously. It spoofs the entire series by making the characters more satirical than actual serious individuals. Instantly, we see the characters with rather altered personalities including Velma who was a soft-spoken but brainy character in the cartoons, yet is very bitter and sarcastic in this. She was my favorite character in the entire movie because of her hilarious remarks and mannerisms.
Fred is resorted to a vain ego-centric bonehead, and Daphne into a prissy defenseless beauty queen. At the start of the film we see Daphne being carried by a ghost and we hear Velma say: “Shockingly, Daphne got captured by the ghost.” That made me break out into laughter because anyone who knows the cartoons know that Daphne is always the one to get caught first and last. A lot of the scenes are actually enjoyable including a great moped chase scene with Shaggy and Scooby, and the climax of the film where the group corrupts the evil lair of the enemy. The animated scenes in this are often very weird, including the enemies that look like demonic versions of Scooby.
The plot is paper thin with its usual prime objective as the gang must solve the crime, but it often gets derailed by these nonsensical scenes including a cringe inducing farting contest sequence between Scooby and Shaggy that went on way too long and a scene where their souls are being mixed around and they begin taking on the mannerisms of each other. The ending is so predictable that toddlers watching this will guess it without hesitation; I had the surprise enemy down by the first forty minutes of the film. “Scooby Doo” really didn’t need a big screen adaptation, and this terribly unfunny, weird live action variation proves it.