Review of Scoob! (2020) by Player2-Water — 07 Jun 2020

E-Value: 7.

Acting: 8.

Plot: 5.

After two terrible live action movies and many direct-to-video movies, Scooby-Doo franchise returns to the big screen and this time in an animated movie. This movie is the first instalment in the planned Hanna-Barbera shared universe. Originally, the movie would have release in the big screen if it weren’t for the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the movie goes straight to video on demand.

The movie begins with Shaggy (Forte) meeting a stray dog, whom he named the dog, Scooby-Doo (Welker). Soon, they become close friends. During Halloween, they meet Fred Jones, Daphne Blake and Velma Dinkley where they catch a costumed thief who have been stealing many electronic devices. This inspires them to work together as a team known as Mystery Inc.

Ten years later, a British entrepreneur decides to do business with Mystery Inc as its investor but he would not invest if Shaggy and Scooby are part of it because he claims that friendship is a weakness. Angered by his words, Shaggy and Scooby leave and hang out in a bowling alley where they were attack by small robots called Rottens.

They were later rescue by the Blue Falcon, Dynomutt and Dee Dee Sykes in a nick of time, whom they told them those robots work for a super criminal named Dick Dastardly (Isaacs). Dastardly wants Shaggy and Scooby for reasons unknown but it has something to do with the three skulls of Cerberus, which he has been stealing them. Meanwhile, Fred along with Daphne and Velma soon tracks down Shaggy and Scooby and they work on their own in solving the mystery to find out what is Dastardly’s plan.

I may not a big fan of Scooby-Doo franchise but Scoob! is a fun and enjoyable movie to watch. The animation and character design are very well done and the voice acting are great. There are lots of funny moments and the humours are not weak and lousy. Although none of the original cast of the previous Scooby-Doo movies (except Frank Welker) returned to voiced their respective characters, everyone in this movie still delivered their best performance. As for Will Forte, he managed to gave his best voice acting for Shaggy. At least, it is a good thing that Shaggy does not sound terrible. However, I wish Matthew Lillard would reprise his role. It would have been great service for hardcore fans of the franchise.

While I enjoyed watching the movie but the story in this movie have some flaws. As this is the first instalment in a shared universe, the movie used up too many characters outside of Scooby-Doo franchise. Because of this, Scoob! became more a Hanna-Barbera crossover movie instead of a Scooby-Doo movie. The movie should have focus on mystery solving stories like how every other Scooby-Doo TV shows and movies have done previously. Honestly, the movie should have been full origin story with Scooby-Doo characters only. The crossover stories should have been save for future instalments. One thing good about this movie is Scoob! did not go overboard with setting up some future instalments like the 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 2017’s The Mummy.

For those who are fans of Hanna-Barbera, you probably will enjoy watching this movie but those who are Scooby-Doo fans, you may or may not like this movie. For the time being, we can only wait and see if this movie will be success. If it does, there might be a sequel to this movie or more Hanna-Barbera movies will be made. If not, this will the only instalment in Hanna-Barbera shared universe. Only time will tell. In the nutshell, this is a mediocre movie. Not too good but it is not too bad either. You can give this movie a shot if you are curious.