With everything going on during this unprecedented time in the world, studios have had to pivot strategies for releasing films. Most films got new release dates, but Trolls: World Tour showed that making it available to for paid video on demand (PVOD), you can have a success. Warner Bros. saw that and decided that Scoob! would be their choice to follow suit. Taking a beloved property and bringing it to kids at home. Will they be successful? Time will tell, but the quality of the film certainly hurts it. Scoob! is generic kid entertainment that strives to be nothing more than just that. Just cotton candy you stopped liking when you turned 7.
The property of Scooby Doo has been around for a very long time as a successful animated program that has launched many films, a couple live action films, and a following that has its lovers. There is nostalgia for the franchise. The group of Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma, and Fred go out in their funky van and solve mysteries with a mask unveiling at the end. Scoob! is no different. In Scoob! we see, although very quickly, the origins of how Scooby and Shaggy met and became best friends. Years later, a villain named Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) sets to unleash Cerberus onto the world unleashing the dogpocalypse. To do this, he needs a descendant of this dog to open the portal, and of course it is Scooby Doo. Yes, this plot is utterly ridiculous and by the end my mind was so numb to the story that I had no idea what was going on. There are superheroes and ghosts and a robot dog flying around all at once. It just became too much and lost what made this property so special in the first place and all that magic was gone.
The biggest problem with Scoob! is its lack of direction and script that is so on the nose that it ends up being tone-deaf. Two of the men get into a shouting match that is broken up when one of the women yells “toxic masculinity”. Kids who will be seeing this film have no idea what that means, and it is going to go completely over them. This film throughout keeps changing its mind as to what direction they want to go in. Do they want to be a kid’s film, or do they want to relate to adults as well? There are decisions throughout that go back and forth with this struggle and it just confuses the audience. There is a moment where the villain has to make it clear to Scooby that his name is Dick and makes sure to shout it at least four times. It is probably the most they try to make a joke for adults, but it is so immature and weird that you just feel uncomfortable. There is entertainment here for kids they can enjoy but if they aren’t locked in right away, this film does not have what it takes to hold their attention.
The voice cast is also just so lackluster that you wonder why they didn’t just get the original cast to come back. Jason Isaacs and Will Forte are trying to have fun with Dick and Shaggy, but they never quite click the way you hope where you don’t hear their voice but instead the character. Zac Efron, Amanda Seyfried, Gina Rodriguez, and Ken Jeong are so boring and ordinary with their roles that you can just picture the money burning from how much they must’ve cost. They aren’t bad, just unremarkable. This film wreaks of the studio being desperate and saying get the biggest actor you can instead of who is best for the role. The biggest example of that is Mark Wahlberg as Blue Falcon. He is supposed to be this superhero who is afraid of being one and Wahlberg is so far from the right choice. Wahlberg conveys confidence and toughness when he speaks which is the complete opposite of what this character is. I just hear this Boston guy behind the mask of a coward that just makes you chuckle. It is a shame that all this talent can be so misplaced.
Scoob! is not a film you need to pay to see at home. I can see now why Warner Bros. decided that this film was better off skipping a theatrical release and coming straight home. It is just neat animation combined with boring storytelling and a messy direction. There is nothing about this film that makes it standout from every other Scooby Doo movies which makes you wonder what the point of it all was. Sure, you can sit your child down in front of this, but don’t expect them to be satisfied like you might think.
The Verdict