What’s that phrase again about old dogs and new tricks? Scoob! is the latest big-budget attempt to package up beloved cartoon canine Scooby-Doo for a new generation, scuttling onto screens 16 years after the last (2004’s Monsters Unleashed). The result is a ruff 90 minutes of strained jokes, charmless animation and cynical attempts to seed a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe, as the Mystery Inc gang receive a misjudged millennial makeover. When Velma, voiced by Gina Rodriguez, announces early on that the supernatural crime-solvers should be taking on “bigger cases, scarier villains and creepier mysteries”, it feels like studio executives are speaking through her; Scoob! is a film hell-bent on taking a character best-served in snack-sized portions and serving him up a full plate of Marvel-esque, fate-of-the-universe spectacle. What’s left is, sadly, a bit of a dog’s dinner.
Scoob! never delivers on the decent raw ingredients at its disposal.
They might have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for meddling movies like Lego’s Batman franchise, showing exactly what can be done introducing age-old icons to younger audiences with vim, wit and imagination. Scoob!, however, never delivers on the decent raw ingredients at its disposal. The film boasts a talented voice cast: Mark Wahlberg is fun as imposter syndrome-suffering superhero Blue Falcon, while Zac Efron and Amanda Seyfried are enjoyable as Fred and Daphne. There are glimpses of good jokes, too – Scooby mistaking a state-of-the-art spaceship for a branch of Ikea, for example. But the film’s first “ruh roh” comes early on, with one of the weirdest celebrity cameos in a kids’ film in some time, and never really recovers.
Maybe the film’s tiredness is to be expected. Mystery Inc’s trusted van, the Mystery Machine, has some serious miles on the clock; Scooby celebrated his 50th birthday last year, giving director Tony Cervone a tough task finding fresh new ground to explore without delving into cringey, oh-look-Scooby-has-a-fidget-spinner territory (thankfully, there’s only one dab in the entire movie). The film’s action set-pieces are serviceable – but Scoob! is a bit of a doody-doo-dud.
