Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Oh, god. Clint Morris of MovieHole.net just dropped this particular load in my e-mail box:
"Scooby Doo" writer James Gunn told Moviehole today that plans for a "Scooby Doo 2" are happening faster than a speeding bullet. "Moving forward quickly on Doo Too", says Gunn. "Looks good. I Think the whole bunch (me, Raja, Suckle, Roven, and the cast) are all raring to go. You'd think we'd be sick of it all after two years, but we've got a lot of ideas that are getting us excited". Gunn is next prepping a remake of "Dawn of the Dead". Could the new Scooby movie be called "Scooby Doo Too"? (and not two?) just maybe.
I went and saw SCOOBY-DOO last Saturday at the premiere. Chinese Theater. Saturday morning. Packed with celebs and their kids. Giant party with free food afterwards. I went as the guest of one of the guys who has “story by” credit on the film, basically to offer moral support since his great script sits unfilmed on a shelf somewhere while... this... this thing... opens on screens everywhere next Friday. Clarence Beaks went with us. He’s new to town, and I decided to drop a premiere on him from this particular vantage point just to see how he reacted. Lots of people get so into the premiere experience that they love whatever the hell gets slapped onto the screen in front of them. Wanna guess what happened to Beaks?
SCOOBY-DOO (d. Raja Gosnell, w. James Gunn)
I come here not to praise SCOOBY-DOO, nor to bury it; I merely wish to wonder aloud why they bothered in the first place.
For a film cobbled together by a director of zero ability from one of the worst shooting scripts in recent memory, perhaps it’s some kind of dubious triumph that SCOOBY-DOO isn’t a serious contender for worst film of the year, but such is the power of Mathew Lillard’s inspired rendition of Shaggy, a joyously uncanny impersonation of Saturday morning television’s stealth stoner that’s so dead-on as to recall one critic’s assessment of Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison: it’s less a performance than a possession. Most importantly, Lillard’s fearless commitment to the unabashed silliness of the endeavor pretty much single-handedly makes the CGI Scooby convincing and endearing. This is no mean feat; ever since Bob Hoskins triumphed in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, filmdom has been littered with gifted actors getting shown up by their animated co-stars – not even the combined talents of Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor could make Jar-Jar Binks appear more than a miscalculated CGI gambit – but Lillard, through his infectious enthusiasm, gives life to the ungainly mutt, damn near rescuing the movie from FLINTSTONES oblivion. Damn near, but not quite.
The history of this long train wreck a-comin’ is practically synonymous with Ain’t It Cool for several reasons, and while many would say we’ve had it out for this movie ever since James Gunn’s script arrived with its decades-past-expiration-date mélange of pot and lesbian jokes, one would’ve hoped that the big brains over at Warner Bros. (there’s gotta be one or two of ‘em over there) would have gleaned from Harry’s vitriolic rants that just maybe something was amiss. Yet did they lift a single finger to address these myriad problems they created for themselves by foolishly jettisoning Craig Titley‘s clever first draft?
I suppose I should be grateful that there weren’t any giant mechanical spiders crudely shoehorned into the third act.
The film actually begins with a faint glimmer of promise, as we’re introduced to the gang in the midst of a typical conclusion to any random episode of the animated series. Fred and Velma are conjuring up a terribly complicated scheme to catch the ghost, who has, of course, captured Daphne, while Scooby and Shaggy are busy finding a way to inadvertently fuck it all up. The entire sequence is meant to feel like a Scooby-Doo cartoon come to life, and the suppressed eight-year old in me wanted to give myself over to the fun, but there’s just no getting around this immutable truth: Raja Gosnell, for a supposed comedic specialist, has a knack for wrapping his hands around the windpipe of a sure-fire set-up and squeezing the life from it with startling viciousness. It’s honestly the one task at which he succeeds unconditionally, and one wonders whether it’s a by-product of innate Rupert Pupkin-esque incompetence, or an elaborate exercise in audience cruelty. Whatever its origin, Gosnell seems overwhelmed by the vastness of his sets, resulting in a blur of discomfiting images punctuated by a surreally pointless Pamela Anderson cameo as the celebrity guest on that week’s episode (imagine what a kick it would’ve been to see the old Harlem Globetrotters emerge from the Mystery Machine), and the obligatory unmasking of the ghost as a cantankerous old coot, followed by an in-depth explanation of his plotting by Fred.
This is where Gunn, the man recently anointed to put a contemporary spin on Romero’s timeless DAWN OF THE DEAD, swoops down and garrotes the flick with his painfully lame amplifying of Fred’s vanity, Velma’s resentment of the credit-hogging pretty boy, and Daphne’s frustration with forever playing the damsel in distress. While such self-conscious satire is a tired post-modern conceit (it’s been nearly a decade since Betty Thomas deconstructed the Brady Bunch mystique), such a scenario could rise above the mundane with some sharply drawn characters and punchy dialogue, but Gunn, an allegedly talented writer whose most notable achievement is the cult novel, THE TOY COLLECTOR, seems satisfied with trotting out the stalest gags imaginable, at which point the film seems ready to flatline at the ten-minute mark.
And it would’ve but for those meddling kids, the afore-praised Lillard and Linda Cardellini, late of the formidable FREAKS AND GEEKS ensemble, who, spared the indignity of navigating a minefield of lesbian gags – quite possibly the only SCOOBY-DOO cliché left unused – imbues the bookish Velma with an unexpectedly palpable sex appeal. When the team is reassembled by the eccentric millionaire owner (Rowan Atkinson) of an inventively designed amusement park (certainly one of the film’s other high points), Gosnell, in the first creative decision of his entire career that isn’t precisely calculated to sabotage his film, keeps the action largely centered around the Shaggy/Scooby duo, or Velma, and whenever we’re in their company, the film transcends smug parody and intermittently becomes the affectionate, good-natured send-up of the Hanna-Barbera pop-cultural touchstone that it should’ve been in the first place.
As for Prinze, Jr. and Buffy, while I can’t say for certain just how much of this duo ended up on the cutting room floor, I am absolutely grateful for every excised frame. Unlike their far more talented co-stars, both performers seem ill-at-ease engaging in the requisite buffoonery, suggesting a couple of humorless, would-be movie stars too good to go slumming. And while Prinze is mercifully absent for long stretches, there does remain a pointless subplot involving Gellar and a hapless voodoo practitioner that’s begging to be snipped.
Once the film reaches its overblown finale, the light touch of Lillard and Carellini gets lost in the sturm und drang, and, ultimately, their solid work isn’t nearly enough to salvage the film; that is, from an adult perspective. Yes, for all of my critical huffing and puffing, I must concede that the film works like a charm for kids; in particular, there’s a protracted fart duel between Shaggy and Scooby that will send anyone under the age of twelve into pants-wetting delirium (that’s not hyperbole, parents; it’s a dead serious warning). Still, if you’re willing to dive headfirst into the gutter, making children laugh is a fairly easy task, and why Warner Bros. had to pour $50 million-plus into an f/x extravaganza when eighty minutes of monkey shit fights at the San Diego Zoo (a sort of kiddie JACKASS hybrid, if you will) would’ve not only accomplished the same goal, but existed as this film’s aesthetic and artistic equal is beyond me.
But there may yet be some good to come of SCOOBY-DOO if the inevitable avalanche of good reviews for Lillard, sharply contrasted with the steady stream of invective directed at his inversely talented buddy, hastens the long-overdue creative split between the two, freeing Matty up to do some real acting for a change, while consigning Prinze, Jr. to a profession commensurate with his abilities; I’m thinking bar-back at Sway.
Until then, I’ll continue to ponder the stubborn idiocy that resulted in this unfilmable garbage going before the cameras. And when this film succeeds, and Raja Gosnell goes on to helm a project more of you care about (perhaps a re-teaming with Freddie Prinze, Jr. on GREEN LANTERN), maybe then you’ll see why AICN railed so caustically in the first place.
Faithfully Submitted,
Mr. Beaks
Then came this Unwanted review of the film. And by that, I mean it’s a review by a guy whose name is Unwanted. Check it out:
Hey I saw Scooby Doo this morning. Print this if you wish. Or tell me that I'm a plant, or both.
It’s hard for me to say this but… Scooby Doo doesn’t suck.
Now don’t get me wrong it isn’t a good movie, but most of the flaws with the film rest in the source material. I cannot think of anyway that a live action Scooby Doo movie could have been made better than the one that is in theatres right now.
Let me start at the beginning. Like any loyal AICNer I had read up on the Scooby Doo and feared for the worst. The question of why anyone could possibly want to make a movie based on Scooby Doo in live action was beyond me. Pretty much everything good about the cartoon would be almost impossible to copy in live action. It sounded like marketing committee drek.
I saw the first trailer that was a spoof on Batman. I was not impressed.
I saw the second trailer and Lillard’s Shaggy was spot on but the rest of the trailer blew chunks.
I started telling jokes about how much Scooby do would suck. I started calling it the worst movie of all time. My basic thoughts were when Matthew Lillard is the best part of you movie you know you’re in trouble.
My friend called me up told me he had a pass and asked me if I wanted to go. I decided that if I was going to be dissing a movie as hard as I was dissing Scooby Doo I’d better see it first.
After the first five minutes, I realized that I didn’t hate the movie. Everything was straight out of the cartoon. The filmmakers had obviously done their homework. Then the first few thinly veiled references to drug use came and the movie had me. This was a faithful and kichty postmodern homage to the cartoon. Fuck, who would have thunk it.
Then about half way through the movie when I figured out who would be unmasked as the villain at the end, I realized something else, not only was the this a kichty postmodern homage to the cartoon, it was also designed with fanboys in mind.
Matthew Lillard was born to play Shaggy. He IS Shaggy. Freddie Prinze Jr. is Freddy. It’s like they were forced to watch Wing Commander over and over and over and wanted to make it up to society. Sarah Michelle Geller passable and non-distracting as Daphne. Same with Linda Cardellini as Velma.
There are bits that really had me laughing. Like the implication that Sugar Ray are part of a cult of soulless monsters trying to take over the world using “cool” slang. The scene where Scooby and Shaggy are “cooking” in their van. The fact that Shaggy’s love interest is Mary Jane.
Maybe it was the fact that my expectations were so low. I don’t know. Whatever the case Scooby Doo is not the kick in the junk that most fans were expecting but a tribute to the show. For those who are not Scooby Doo fans, well you probably won’t like this at all. Personally I can’t fault the production much at all for any problems people might have with the movie, it is pretty much all in the source material. There were a handful of lame lines in the film (pretty much all of which are highlighted in that first trailer) and a gratuitous fart scene (the kiddies love the fart scenes) but other than that, I liked the way that it worked out.
P.S. I’m not a plant.
P.P.S. I thinks you protest too much
P.P.P.S No I’m really not a plant I actually liked Scooby Doo, which has both Lillard and FPjr. in it.
P.P.P.P.S AGGH! Laws of physics and universe folding in upon itself! Crushing death painfull!!!
UnWanted
When the best you can say about a movie is “Hey! It didn’t suck!” then I’d say you’re not really recommending it... are you?
"Moriarty" out.
