The long-running cartoon from William Hanna and Joseph Barbera that began life in 1969 as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? becomes this live-action, tongue-in-cheek comedy-adventure featuring a computer-generated version of the easily frightened, mush-mouthed Great Dane. Freddie Prinze Jr. stars as Fred, the blonde, confident, ascot-sporting leader of Mystery Inc., a ghost-busting service that exposes phony supernatural phenomena as the work of shysters. Working with Fred are: his rich, beautiful
girlfriend, Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who has a bad habit of getting kidnapped by villains; Velma (Linda Cardellini), the real brains of the group who pines secretly for Fred; cowardly slacker and dog's best friend Shaggy (Matthew Lillard); and the snack-gobbling pet pooch Scooby. However, after solving its latest case involving a beleaguered toy company owner (Pamela Anderson), the group fractures over Fred's habit of grabbing credit for everyone's hard work, despite the pleas of Shaggy and Scooby. Two years later, they are reunited at Spooky Island, a theme park and teen spring break destination that owner Emile Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson) claims is plagued with ghosts. Suspicious as usual of any claims involving the paranormal, the Mystery Inc. clan is soon probing a scheme involving ancient rites, summoned spirits, and brainwashed college students, forcing the group members to resolve their differences and uncover the truth. Directed by Chris Columbus protégé Raja Gosnell, Scooby-Doo features the voice of Scott Innes as the title character. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
The acting is stiff, the story lacks all trace of wit, the sets look like they were borrowed from Gilligan's Island -- and the CGI Scooby might well be the worst special-effects creation of the year.
What really makes this movie special is Matthew Lillard's inspired performance as Shaggy. It's not only a dead-on impersonation of the cartoon character, but it also comes with a certain kind of unique joy and a genuine soul.
'Beating a dead CGI-crafted dog, the disc boasts a redundancy of forgettable featurettes that could easily have been edited into a single documentary.'
I saw this on its theatrical release mainly out of morbid curiosity really and even back then it was pretty damn poor. About the only thing they got right in the film is the casting of Lillard for 'Shaggy' who seems to have been born for the role. Rowan Atkinson must have been bribed with tonnes of cash to star in this
crap.The rest of the film is a terrible mess of horrendously bad cgi, unfunny childish humour and some very shoddy effects. The classic creation has been forced into the current age with a hideous modernisation including your obligatory rap/hop hop soundtrack that seems to come with most films these days for some reason alongside so many other god awful scenes it no longer bares much resemblance to the original creation.I dunno why they couldn't go with a more sensible approach and a slightly more genuine ghost story. The cartoons were silly yes but still reasonably coherent and actually quite spooky for kids, but spooky in an enjoyable way, this film is basically just trash...and since when was 'Scrappy' a bad guy!?As usual and with so many films these days, stick with the original material.
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