Scooby-Doo: The Movie (BD)
Zoinks! Two years after a clash of egos forced Mystery Inc. to close it's doors, Scooby-Doo and his clever crime-solving cohorts Fred (FREDDIE PRINZE JR.), Daphne (SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR), Shaggy (MATTHEW LILLARD) and Velma (LINDA CARDELLINI) are individually summoned to Spooky Island to investigate a series of paranormal incidents at the ultra-hip Spring Break hot spot. Concerned that his frightfully popular resort might truly be haunted, Spooky Island owner Emile Mondavarious (ROWAN ATKINSON) tries to reunite those notoriously meddling detectives to solve the mystery before his supernatural secret scares away the college crowds. Scooby and the gang will have to overcome their personal differences and forget everything they think they know about fake ghouls and phony creatures to crack the case, save themselves and possibly...the world! Ruh-roh!
Amazon.com "I would've gotten away with it if weren't for you meddling kids!" Equal parts remake and spoof, this tongue-in-cheek live-action resurrection finds the old Saturday-morning-cartoon gang reunited to investigate the zombie teens of a haunted amusement park. Frantic action and big-screen special effects stand in for logic, but for a while it makes for a spirited send-up. Freddie Prinze Jr., under a blond hairdo and an ascot, turns Fred into a preening pretty boy, and Sarah Michelle Gellar plays with her own Buffy image as eternal damsel-in-distress Daphne (in magenta mini-dress and maxi-boots, no less), but this show belongs to gangly Matthew Lillard, who is the adenoidal beatnik Shaggy. His loyal-to-the-end friendship with the computer-animated Scooby-Doo is the most convincing relationship in the whole two-dimensional goof. Some of the supernatural nasties may be scary for young kids and the humor careens from winking self-awareness to Scooby doo-doo gags, but otherwise this is as harmless as a Saturday-morning chapter and as substantial as a Scooby snack. --Sean Axmaker
