OPINION: Scooby-Doo live action movies lack charm of show, all-around pieces of garbage

On Sept. 13, “Scoobert ‘Scooby’ Doo” and the rest of the mystery gang turned 50! These meddling kids and their mangy mutt have been a part of just about everyone’s childhood, so I wanted to do something special for their birthday. I decided to review the two live-action Scooby-Doo movies: Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

Oh god, they’re horrible.

Before I start ripping these movies to shreds, I want to look at the positives. Matthew Lillard, the actor who portrays “Shaggy,” is great. Every one of his actions and line deliveries is spot-on. He was so good as Shaggy, he was offered a voice acting role for the character and has been voicing him in the recent TV shows. Linda Cardellini’s performance as “Velma” is also pretty stellar. She captures the way Velma speaks, moves and thinks very well. Just a very solid performance. Also, the set design is pretty good. The set designer did a good job making a somewhat real-looking but cartoony set in both movies; however it was dialed up to an 11 in the sequel. And…um…the costumes were nice?

Okay, let’s get to the poop.

These movies are awful. I mean, they are really awful. Everything from the writing to the camera work is just bad. The general look of the movies, moreso the first one rather than the sequel, just makes me want to vomit. The CGI looks so bad and dated. The CGI characters do not look like they are really there, especially Scooby-Doo. He looks so ugly and is really hard to look at, which is a shame because he is the titular character.

Speaking of which, the characters are awful.

The way “Fred” is written  is the most basic and boring way to write a good-looking team leader. He is, say it with me now, a dumb jock who is obsessed with himself and takes credit for all the team’s successes, even when he didn’t do much of the planning. I guess these movies are just hoping that no one in their audience has ever seen a movie before because anyone can tell you where his character arc is leading. Fred is such a boring character in these movies, and he doesn’t have to be. There are plenty of Scooby-Doo shows and movies that have way more interesting and developed Freds.

Now, let’s discuss “Daphne.”

I believe the discussion the writers had in the writing room went a little something like this, “Hm, what should we do with Daphne? She doesn’t really do that much in the show. She normally just plays the role of damsel in distress. Oh! I know! Let’s make her do Kung-Fu for literally no reason and make her a dumb popular girl!” Daphne’s character makes me want to slam my head into my wall. Again, it was just a boring, bland, unoriginal, popular girl stereotype whose sole arc is to not be the damsel in distress. I get bored just writing about it. Most of these character flaws carry over to the second movie, yet somehow I enjoy it more. I don’t know how or why really (maybe because they are toned down), but in the second movie it just feels better. 

The first movie sucks. I would rather watch anything other than that piece of ugly garbage. The sequel, however, I would actually watch again. It’s a bad movie, don’t get it twisted, but the parts that are good are actually decent enough to keep me watching. Maybe it’s just because I watched a colossal poopshow right before it, but I kind of enjoyed it. It’s definitely an easier movie to get through, and the use of more practical effects definitely helps. 

I find it sad that the Scooby-Doo franchise, a franchise that revolutionized the way children’s cartoons are written, has such bad, boring and formulaic live-action movies. These movies are poop, and I Scooby-Dooby-Don’t recommend you watch them.