Post by petrolino on May 12, 2018 0:32:27 GMT
'Scooby-Doo' is a live-action, feature-length film based on the popular cartoon show 'The Scooby-Doo Show' which originally aired in the late 1970s. Jock Fred Jones (Freddie Prinze Jr.), cheerleader Daphne Blake (Sarah Michelle Gellar), nerd Velma Dinkley (Linda Cardellini) and stoner Shaggy Rogers (Matthew Lillard) make up a successful private detective crew with their dog Scooby Doo that's known to the public as Mystery Incorporated. The group splits up due to internal friction but is brought back together in order to solve a case at the popular horror resort Spooky Island.
'WOW-O TOY FACTORY ~ The Case Of The Luna Ghost
Scooby Doo
'Skin Tight' - Ohio Players
'Scooby-Doo' sees the gang take the Spooky Air passenger flight to Spooky Island. There's a rapid explosion of colour at this radical rainbow spectacle as the gang are soon playing live pinball in a haunted house of horrors. When they witness video evidence of an active brainwashing facility that's backed up by raw data, this leads to a dangerous plot involving demonic possession as the gang are hypnotised by psychedelic haze.
The engaging monster smash 'Scooby Doo' is directed by Raja Gosnell who went on to score another seismic hit with 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua' (2008). It's scripted by filmmaker James Gunn who's expanded upon some of the ideas and stylistic flourishes seen here with the 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' franchise for Marvel Studios. Gunn's script for 'Scooby-Doo' invokes other Hanna-Barbera cartoon creations, drops plenty of cultural references and invites a high-powered soundtrack into play. A smorgasbord of fantastical ideas is nicely rendered via some imaginative computer generated imagery and there are numerous horror cinema tenets and science-fiction motifs thrown into the mix. It's all a bit chaotic and not all the gags hit their targets, but it's infection fun for the most part.
I think there's some genuinely stunning visuals at play in 'Scooby-Doo', pure eye-candy sequences that reach the artistic heights of boundary-pushing, family-orientated pictures released the decade prior, such as 'The Addams Family' (1991), 'Casper' (1995), 'That Darn Cat!' (1997) and 'My Brother The Pig' (1999), while simultaneously ushering in the visual inventiveness of films like 'Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events' (2004) and 'Alice In Wonderland' (2010). For crazy pot smokes and the full funk flavour you'd probably have to watch 'Scooby-Doo' with the sound turned up high though.
"The obnoxious special effects, the obligatory outbursts of flatulence and the incessant, so-five-minutes-ago pop music on the soundtrack overwhelm what is left of the scruffy, dopey old Hanna-Barbera charm. This is a shame, because the best thing about ''Scooby-Doo,'' which opens today nationwide, is not the high-tech hooey, or the animated dog himself, who has made a grotesque transition from two dimensions into three, but the human cast.
Mr. Lillard, the irrepressible goon of the ''Scream'' movies, is as gangly and sweet as the cartoon Shaggy was, and he uncannily approximates the Saturday morning hipster intonations of Casey Kasem, who did the original voice-over. Ms. Gellar, taking a busman's holiday from vampire-slaying, looks fetching in her purple minidress and lavender boots, and she adds a snarl of Powerpuff feminism to her character's ditzy stereotype. Ms. Cardellini has less room for invention, but she holds up well under her nerd helmet and heavy glasses.
Which leaves Mr. Prinze, in a role he was surely born to play. His blondness here is nothing short of a revelation, and he shows, perhaps for the first time, some real comic instinct. At one point, for reasons that need not detain us here, Ms. Gellar's voice and personality briefly inhabit his body, and vice versa. ''Get your hands off me,'' Mr. Prinze bellows at his real-life beloved, in her voice.
This moment is not quite worth the price of a ticket, but devoted connoisseurs of ridiculous, throwaway pop-cultural magic will want it for their collections, along with that episode from the old ''Scooby-Doo'' when the gang was trapped in this haunted old house, and Daphne was kidnapped and Shaggy became scared and jumped into Scooby's arms and then Velma's."
- A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"The corpse of a vastly overrated 1970s cartoon - tolerated in an age before multi-channel choice and before The Simpsons - is very much not revived in this incredibly leaden and unutterably boring live action version, with a 3D computer animation of the not very adorable Scooby. Star Freddie Prinze Jr has all the charisma and comic presence of a piece of cheese; he plays Fred, leader of Mystery Inc, the crime-busting gang. With steel-blond hair and a cravat, he is very homosexual indeed, a 21st-century gag hinted at with remarks about Fred knowing how to "accessorise", but not pushed further.
Sarah Michelle Gellar gives Daphne that Buffy-ish earnestness that somehow in this context kills any fun stone dead. Matthew Lillard is the crusty-ish, hippy-ish Shaggy, and he can certainly do the voice. As the sinister Mr Mondavarious, Rowan Atkinson goes through the motions, speaking the lines with the air of a man calculating how many classic cars he can buy with the fee. And, oh yes, there's a pointless and entirely unfunny cameo from Pamela Anderson at the beginning. The film perks up a tiny bit with a finale slightly more sprightly than the boring hour-and-a-half that's gone before, but that's really not saying much. It's not so much a question of Scooby-Dooby-Doo, Where Are You - but Why?"
- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
'Baby Sinister' - Slave
President Donald J. Trump was considered for a cameo in 'Scooby-Doo' as Fred's uncle but he didn't like the dog or the hippies. He did, however, endorse Pamela Anderson's cameo for Canadian status, and as the script still states, "Gotta a bag of, aaaa .... hamburgers here for yooou."
"Quick, Scoobo, grab the food-o, let's scramo."
'WOW-O TOY FACTORY ~ The Case Of The Luna Ghost
Scooby Doo
'Skin Tight' - Ohio Players
'Scooby-Doo' sees the gang take the Spooky Air passenger flight to Spooky Island. There's a rapid explosion of colour at this radical rainbow spectacle as the gang are soon playing live pinball in a haunted house of horrors. When they witness video evidence of an active brainwashing facility that's backed up by raw data, this leads to a dangerous plot involving demonic possession as the gang are hypnotised by psychedelic haze.
"Characters like Scooby Doo and Fred Flintstone are icons of pop culture and their suspiciously similar catchphrases, Yabba-Dabba-Doo and Scooby-Dooby-Doo, have passed into common parlance. In their 1960s heyday, Hanna-Barbera were delivering six hours of cartoons and live action programmes to US TV stations every week. They had a global audience of more than 300 million people, and their shows were translated into more than 20 different languages.
Although there were other animation studios around, notably Filmation and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, none of them could compete with Hanna-Barbera's roster of characters. Among the studio's most enduring creations were Huckleberry Hound, whose TV show won an Emmy in 1960, and the "effectual, intellectual" Top Cat. Hanna-Barbera was also responsible for Yogi Bear, Hong Kong Phooey, Wacky Races, Captain Caveman, The Jetsons and The Flintstones which, until the Simpsons, was the longest-running animated series to be shown on primetime TV."
- Mark Savage, The British Broadcasting Corporation
"Since their first co-venture in 1938, the key to the creative genius of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera has been ingenuity. For the Flintstones the ingenuity is that which translates the labour-saving devices of the early 1960s to 5,000 years BC. A gramophone record spins beneath a bird's-beak needle; a stegosaurus becomes a golf buggy; a mammoth's trunk makes the perfect lawn sprinkler. For the duo's other best-loved characters though, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Scooby Doo, the ingenuity is that which informs the creatures themselves. How will Yogi snaffle the picnickers' basket or Top Cat escape from jail?
It is typical of the humour of Hanna and Barbera that while their human characters should be confounded, their animals always succeed. We know that Yogi will get that cream cake, Scooby round up those crooks and Top Cat foil Officer Dibble. But to demonstrate such ingenuity requires a stooge and here is another Hanna / Barbera device. As Yogi has Boo Boo so Fred has Barney and Top Cat Benny. The small guys with the 'B' names do their stuff. 'Gosh Yogi', 'Gosh Fred', 'Golly TC' they gawp in admiration at their heroes' resourcefulness. The lesson for Boo Boo and Benny is simple: you need cunning and stealth tempered with compassion."
- Iain Gale, The Independent
'Wanna Make Love (Come Flick My Bic)' - Sun
Although there were other animation studios around, notably Filmation and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, none of them could compete with Hanna-Barbera's roster of characters. Among the studio's most enduring creations were Huckleberry Hound, whose TV show won an Emmy in 1960, and the "effectual, intellectual" Top Cat. Hanna-Barbera was also responsible for Yogi Bear, Hong Kong Phooey, Wacky Races, Captain Caveman, The Jetsons and The Flintstones which, until the Simpsons, was the longest-running animated series to be shown on primetime TV."
- Mark Savage, The British Broadcasting Corporation
"Since their first co-venture in 1938, the key to the creative genius of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera has been ingenuity. For the Flintstones the ingenuity is that which translates the labour-saving devices of the early 1960s to 5,000 years BC. A gramophone record spins beneath a bird's-beak needle; a stegosaurus becomes a golf buggy; a mammoth's trunk makes the perfect lawn sprinkler. For the duo's other best-loved characters though, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Scooby Doo, the ingenuity is that which informs the creatures themselves. How will Yogi snaffle the picnickers' basket or Top Cat escape from jail?
It is typical of the humour of Hanna and Barbera that while their human characters should be confounded, their animals always succeed. We know that Yogi will get that cream cake, Scooby round up those crooks and Top Cat foil Officer Dibble. But to demonstrate such ingenuity requires a stooge and here is another Hanna / Barbera device. As Yogi has Boo Boo so Fred has Barney and Top Cat Benny. The small guys with the 'B' names do their stuff. 'Gosh Yogi', 'Gosh Fred', 'Golly TC' they gawp in admiration at their heroes' resourcefulness. The lesson for Boo Boo and Benny is simple: you need cunning and stealth tempered with compassion."
- Iain Gale, The Independent
'Wanna Make Love (Come Flick My Bic)' - Sun
The engaging monster smash 'Scooby Doo' is directed by Raja Gosnell who went on to score another seismic hit with 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua' (2008). It's scripted by filmmaker James Gunn who's expanded upon some of the ideas and stylistic flourishes seen here with the 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' franchise for Marvel Studios. Gunn's script for 'Scooby-Doo' invokes other Hanna-Barbera cartoon creations, drops plenty of cultural references and invites a high-powered soundtrack into play. A smorgasbord of fantastical ideas is nicely rendered via some imaginative computer generated imagery and there are numerous horror cinema tenets and science-fiction motifs thrown into the mix. It's all a bit chaotic and not all the gags hit their targets, but it's infection fun for the most part.
"Over the decades, Hanna-Barbera Productions created or produced more than 300 different series, specials, TV movies and films. Their shows have been seen in more than 80 countries and in 22 languages."
- Tim Bonfield, The Cincinnati Enquirer
"Next to Walt Disney, it's Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Nobody else even comes close.”
- Dennis Speigel, President of International Theme Park Services in Cincinnati
'Good Thang' - Faze-O
'Hanna-Barbera Cartoons List' at Cleveland.com
- Tim Bonfield, The Cincinnati Enquirer
"Next to Walt Disney, it's Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Nobody else even comes close.”
- Dennis Speigel, President of International Theme Park Services in Cincinnati
'Good Thang' - Faze-O
'Hanna-Barbera Cartoons List' at Cleveland.com
I think there's some genuinely stunning visuals at play in 'Scooby-Doo', pure eye-candy sequences that reach the artistic heights of boundary-pushing, family-orientated pictures released the decade prior, such as 'The Addams Family' (1991), 'Casper' (1995), 'That Darn Cat!' (1997) and 'My Brother The Pig' (1999), while simultaneously ushering in the visual inventiveness of films like 'Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events' (2004) and 'Alice In Wonderland' (2010). For crazy pot smokes and the full funk flavour you'd probably have to watch 'Scooby-Doo' with the sound turned up high though.
"The obnoxious special effects, the obligatory outbursts of flatulence and the incessant, so-five-minutes-ago pop music on the soundtrack overwhelm what is left of the scruffy, dopey old Hanna-Barbera charm. This is a shame, because the best thing about ''Scooby-Doo,'' which opens today nationwide, is not the high-tech hooey, or the animated dog himself, who has made a grotesque transition from two dimensions into three, but the human cast.
Mr. Lillard, the irrepressible goon of the ''Scream'' movies, is as gangly and sweet as the cartoon Shaggy was, and he uncannily approximates the Saturday morning hipster intonations of Casey Kasem, who did the original voice-over. Ms. Gellar, taking a busman's holiday from vampire-slaying, looks fetching in her purple minidress and lavender boots, and she adds a snarl of Powerpuff feminism to her character's ditzy stereotype. Ms. Cardellini has less room for invention, but she holds up well under her nerd helmet and heavy glasses.
Which leaves Mr. Prinze, in a role he was surely born to play. His blondness here is nothing short of a revelation, and he shows, perhaps for the first time, some real comic instinct. At one point, for reasons that need not detain us here, Ms. Gellar's voice and personality briefly inhabit his body, and vice versa. ''Get your hands off me,'' Mr. Prinze bellows at his real-life beloved, in her voice.
This moment is not quite worth the price of a ticket, but devoted connoisseurs of ridiculous, throwaway pop-cultural magic will want it for their collections, along with that episode from the old ''Scooby-Doo'' when the gang was trapped in this haunted old house, and Daphne was kidnapped and Shaggy became scared and jumped into Scooby's arms and then Velma's."
- A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"The corpse of a vastly overrated 1970s cartoon - tolerated in an age before multi-channel choice and before The Simpsons - is very much not revived in this incredibly leaden and unutterably boring live action version, with a 3D computer animation of the not very adorable Scooby. Star Freddie Prinze Jr has all the charisma and comic presence of a piece of cheese; he plays Fred, leader of Mystery Inc, the crime-busting gang. With steel-blond hair and a cravat, he is very homosexual indeed, a 21st-century gag hinted at with remarks about Fred knowing how to "accessorise", but not pushed further.
Sarah Michelle Gellar gives Daphne that Buffy-ish earnestness that somehow in this context kills any fun stone dead. Matthew Lillard is the crusty-ish, hippy-ish Shaggy, and he can certainly do the voice. As the sinister Mr Mondavarious, Rowan Atkinson goes through the motions, speaking the lines with the air of a man calculating how many classic cars he can buy with the fee. And, oh yes, there's a pointless and entirely unfunny cameo from Pamela Anderson at the beginning. The film perks up a tiny bit with a finale slightly more sprightly than the boring hour-and-a-half that's gone before, but that's really not saying much. It's not so much a question of Scooby-Dooby-Doo, Where Are You - but Why?"
- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
'Baby Sinister' - Slave
President Donald J. Trump was considered for a cameo in 'Scooby-Doo' as Fred's uncle but he didn't like the dog or the hippies. He did, however, endorse Pamela Anderson's cameo for Canadian status, and as the script still states, "Gotta a bag of, aaaa .... hamburgers here for yooou."
"Y0-hi-ooo ... don't give up the funk!!"
(Go Cavs!)
(Go Cavs!)
The extended, stand-still flatulence gag is said to have inspired a similar set-up with Adam Sandler and David Hasselhoff in Frank Coraci's outlandish science-fiction fantasy 'Click' (2006). Shaggy contributes the track 'Shaggy, Where Are You?' on the ebullient soundtrack to 'Scooby-Doo' which is followed by the blockbusting sequel 'Scooby-Doo 2 : Monsters Unleashed' (2004).
