Movies
Slightly better than the first film. This one plays more like a Ghostbusters flick, only with the Scooby-Doo crew present. I'm still not too taken with the overly childish performances, but the monsters are pretty amusing in this one, and there's plenty of different ones to keep things interesting. The Mystery Inc. gang is attending the opening of a museum wing dedicated to their successes. With the whole town watching, a new bad guy makes his entrance. He has a machine that revives all the monsters from the past, Scooby-Doo and his friends are on the case to save Coolsville from impending doom. The film is quite loud and hectic, the CG looks a little cheap (probably because it's squarely aimed at kids, but that's just lazy) and the setup is a complete rip-off. But the monster designs are kinda fun and the pacing is hellish, which is definitely a plus for this type of film. Far from great, but somewhat entertaining.Read all
I never really bothered with Scooby-Doo when I was young, I knew just about enough to switch the channel whenever it was on. I remember it as a rather cheap and drab-looking cartoon, which means this film is quite the departure from the original. It's still pretty cheap mind, but it's also a loud and shameless explosion of color and zest. Director Raja Gosnell is known for his cheery renditions of kid-friendly, animal-driven material (especially when you consider the Smurfs to be animals), personally I can't stand the man's work. It's never funny, it's terribly garish and it seems hellbent on catering to only the youngest of audiences. Scooby-Doo fit perfectly into his body of work, but I will say that the film fully commits to its own silliness. It's daft from the very first moment until the very last frame, and everything from sets to costumes to gags is delivered with the same, excessive amount of cheese. It's a small silver lining in an otherwise horrible film.Read all
I'm not a big fan of the original Smurfs cartoons, so there's no grudge there. Even then this is one of the dumbest, most annoying and most irritating films I've seen in a long time. The acting is atrocious, the modernized Smurfs are completely unlikable and the Paris setting makes no sense. A terrible, terrible film.
