Review: ‘Scooby-Doo’ needs to be fixed

Geoff Carter

Friday, June 14, 2002 | 8:51 a.m.

'Scooby-Doo'

Grade: *

Starring: Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Linda Cardellini, Matthew Lillard and Rowan Atkinson.

Screenplay: James Gunn.

Director: Raja Gosnell.

Rated: PG for some rude humor, language and some scary action.

Running time: 87 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

Growing up, I viewed Hanna-Barbera's "Scooby-Doo" as the Wheatena of Saturday mornings: It was something I considered only when I realized there was absolutely no good cereal left in the cabinet.

Predictable, unfunny and lame, "Scooby" became palatable only when I knew the other two networks were showing news or golf.

Raja Gosnell's live-action adaptation of "Scooby-Doo" is marginally better than its source material, which is to say that it's not very good at all. It may entertain some children, but so do Nickelodeon's animated offerings, and those at least have a few under-the-radar adult jokes for parents to enjoy. Very young kids will be scared by its ugly computer-generated beasts; teens will be bored by it; and anyone over the age of 17 will yearn for CNN, the PGA Tour, or a nap.

You know the plot: The now-familar Mystery Inc. gang (funnier in parodies such as "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" than they are here) is called to an island amusement park by Mondevarious (Rowan Atkinson) to discover what's turning its college-age visitors into zombies.

The gang is barely on speaking terms -- Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is tired of being a damsel in distress, Velma (Linda Cardellini) is tired of not getting any credit and Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is simply a glib jerk. Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo (a CGI creation voiced by Scott Innes) remain friends, and not coincidentally the center of the film.

Lillard's performance deserves note above all others. Not only does he mimic perfectly the gravelly yodel supplied by Casey Kasem for the cartoon series, but he contorts his body and his face into a perfect cartoon; he's the most animated entity in a movie loaded with real cartoons. I liked him despite his surroundings, and rather wished that his character could have been transported into some Robert Altman setting, where he'd be hailed as a comic genius. Here, he's the only saving grace of a nearly graceless exercise in fart jokes, slapstick and lame dialogue.

Also worth noting is Cardellini, who's prettier than Gellar and more in control of her performance, and the junior Prinze's transformation, seemingly unawares, into Stephen Baldwin.

Atkinson is miscast, the visual effects are terrible and the appearance of fey rock-ska band Sugar Ray (the Davey Jones of now, apparently) only confirms that Hollywood's take on America's youth is 5 years old. In that way, the movie version of "Scooby-Doo" couldn't be closer to its animated parent.