Wow, what a great episode!
I thought Mark Hamill was the best guest star we've seen in this series. It actually sort of reminded me of Tim Conway's episode in The New Scooby-Doo Movies in several ways, between it taking place at a high school, some of Hamill's jokes and mannerisms, and even down to them hiding in a recycle bin (well, okay, the original episode was in a trash can, but hey, you gotta upgrade for the 21st century, right? haha). Mark Hamill added a great presence to this episode, and I thought his acting was on-point. He genuinely seemed really passionate about the role, which I don't think we've necessarily seen from all the guest stars. I liked all the references to Star Wars, the joke about Shaggy having the $1,000,000 personal check from Hamill, and even down to his Joker laugh. The references to old episodes like the Wonder Woman one and the Batman one showed how much care was put into this episode, which was refreshing as we've gotten some subpar ones in this series. The nostalgia also felt much more genuine in this one, rather than forced like it has in many episodes. The villain was quite odd looking, but pretty creepy (I find bugged-out eyes to be particularly creepy!). He looked like something out of an anime! When it was first announced, I was thinking the fox monster was going to be the school mascot, but interestingly he wasn't. I felt the character interactions were pretty decent for the most part, besides the one sort of awkward bit where Velma loses her glasses. I loved the school in Japan as a location too! Just added to the creepy vibe. So this is gonna surprise y'all, but here's the updated scoreboard. We have a new top episode! Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. The Sword, The Fox and the Scooby-Doo! 2. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 3. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 4. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 5. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 6. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 7. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 8. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 9. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 10. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 11. Quit Clowning! 12. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 13. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 14. The Fastest Food Fiend! 15. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided
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This was a pretty good episode!
Atmospherically, the setting was top notch. The creepy old isolated mansion really worked for the episode overall. I thought the Nightmare Ghost, however, was the star of the episode. The Nightmare Ghost's design gave me some real Slenderman vibes, which was super creepy especially with the lore behind him. I thought the Nightmare Ghost's use of snowblowers was also pretty cool, particularly in the scene where he causes the multiple levels of the mansion to be covered in snow and ice. As a guest star, Whoopi was pretty decent. She seemed really into the role and there were some cute moments between her and Shaggy and Scooby. She's probably one of my favorite guest stars so far. Thank you so much to Peralaan for sending me the episode file, without which I wouldn't have been able to see this episode! Let's update the Star-Studded Scoreboard after a five-month break! Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! (Favorite episode) 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 4. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 5. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 6. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 7. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 8. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 9. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 10. Quit Clowning! 11. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 12. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 13. The Fastest Food Fiend! 14. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided (Least favorite episode) This is one of the rarer Scooby-Doo items I have in my collection, and stumbled upon it while cleaning the other day. This Scooby-Doo Plug and Play Game was made by Jakk's Pacific and released in 2005. It includes five games (each of which are five levels), The Race to Fontecastello, River of Frights, Searching the Castle, The Mysterious Doors, and The Dungeons of Fontecastello. Each of these games technically put together a story, but they can also be played individually.
For this review, I'm going to review each game individually. The Race to Fontecastello The first game involves you controlling the Mystery Machine and attempting to get to the castle while picking up Shaggy, Scooby and Velma along the way. The first level is pretty simple, you just have to dodge that are coming at you from both sides of the road, and others that are crashed. In the second level, however, it gets a bit more difficult. You have to avoid the Black Knight who is in a car behind you. You can get rid of him by throwing banana peels at his car, though you have to find them along the way, and can only pick up one at a time. If you do not have any banana peels, you are out of luck and have to deal with the Knight ramming The Mystery Machine until you find another banana peel. This is one part I don't like about the game, because there isn't much strategy to it and just is circumstantial. The cars are gone from this level, but you also have to dodge skeletons and rocks. The next level is exactly the same, with the exception of introducing ramps. The fourth level gets significantly more challenging. You have to avoid both ghosts and cars coming at you, as well as a ghost which is behind you. The only way you can get rid of the ghost is by finding a rocket, which allows you to drive the Mystery Machine at hyper speed. (You can also collect rockets in all other levels of this game) This speed boost is both a curse and a blessing, because it makes the Mystery Machine go so fast that it is very difficult to dodge obstacles. The fifth and final level is the most challenging, because it includes both the Knight's car and the ghost, but never at the same time from as far as I've seen. Ghosts don't come at you, but things that appear to be crawling coffins attempt to attack you from in front. You also must dodge rocks and other obstacles. One other piece I forgot to mention until now is that you can collect Scooby Snacks along the way. If you collect 25 snacks, you will gain an extra life. You begin with a total of 3 lives, but can increase that number with Scooby Snacks. There is no limit to how many lives you can have. Overall, this particular game is just okay. While it's very challenging, I feel that the game was a bit poorly made because much of the challenge is due to random circumstance rather than strategy or being good at the game. It's possible to die from the Knight's car ramming you too many times, simply because there were no banana peels to throw at his car. River of Frights This is a pretty fun game, and solves the "circumstantial" issue I had with the last game. In this game, you play as Shaggy, and have to jump from log to log on a river to avoid the knight who is right behind you. You also have to avoid alligators and frogs along the way. Amusingly, Scooby throws storks from the shoreline, which you can collect to distract the frogs so they won't lick you and cause you to lose health. You can jump on alligators as logs, but if they snap at you (which can happen at any time, but sometimes you get lucky), you lose 1/3 of your health. There's not really any variation to the levels with this one. Searching the Castle While I love the music and setting of this one, this game is incredibly difficult to play due to the poor design of it. Searching the Castle has you play as Shaggy and Scooby, and you have to navigate your way through the castle (somewhat aimlessly, as you don't find anything) while avoiding monsters. The first level features some sort of skeleton pirate as the villain. To dodge these villains, you have to hide behind objects in the castle until the villain passes you. There's also bats which you have to duck from pushing the joystick forward, and rats you have to pull the joystick backwards to jump into Shaggy's arms. The problem with this is that the joystick is hypersensitive, and even bumping it ever so slightly on accident will cause Scooby to jump into Shaggy's arms. While sometimes this can just be a minor annoyance, it will often happen at horrible times like when you're trying to hide from a villain, which will likely have you shouting at your TV because the joystick isn't responsive haha. There's no strategy whatsoever to this game, and the villains populate throughout the level randomly. I've had levels where there are no villains at all except bats, and others where there are like 10 in one level. Sometimes the villains will even populate on top of each other because of this glitch, so you'll get two ghosts coming at you at once. The second level is the same, but introduces ladders into regular gameplay that you have to climb up. The third level introduces ghosts, but takes away the skeleton pirates and rats. The fourth level reintroduces the skeleton pirates, has ghosts and rats, and also introduces bugs and a giant spider, which always appears at the end of the level. The fifth and final level includes everything and introduces more than one giant spider. This game is my least favorite even though the setting and music is great. Because of the circumstance and poor programming of the joystick, it makes the game difficult and unenjoyable to play. The Mysterious Doors This game is pretty fun! As Scooby, you have to navigate your way through several mysterious doors to find the right door that brings you to the end of the level. You also have to avoid mummies and ghost dogs (which are basically just a dog with a sheet over its head). The mummies can also go through doors, though the ghost dogs cannot. You can collect locks (one at a time) to lock a specific door for a short time so mummies cannot go through them. You can also collect a crystal ball to see where a particular door will lead you. There's a map on the bottom left corner which shows you the different types of doors, to make it easier to see how many doors are on a particular level. There's not much variation to the game from level to level. The Dungeons of Fontecastello This is easily my favorite of the games included here. The Dungeons of Fontecastello has you playing as Shaggy, trying to find keys to open the lock to get to the next level. Along the way, you have to avoid ghosts and other villains and traps. In level 1, all you have to do is find the copper key and avoid ghosts. In level 2, it gets a bit more difficult, and you have to find both a copper and silver key, while avoiding ghosts and moving statues. Level 3 gets even more challenging, because you have to once again find a copper and silver key, while avoiding ghosts and now trap doors. You can control the trap doors, however, by turning the switches next to them on and off. My absolute favorite part of the game is the fact that though it's completely unnecessary for gameplay, you can control the trap doors by turning the switch to "off," then as the ghost is about to come over the trap door to grab you, you can turn the switch on and have them fall down the trap door. The best part about this is that the ghosts make an amusing noise as they're about to fall, it's a very shocked yelp like they were just touched in an unwanted way or something lol. It amuses me so much that the game programmers chose to program in this little aspect that was completely unnecessary to getting through the game, and even made the ghosts have feelings when it happens haha. I'm sure it's much funnier when you hear it in the game rather than my explanation of it. The fourth level is the most difficult (odd considering there are five levels), because it includes the ghosts, moving statues, and trap doors as well as three keys, copper, silver and gold. The final level includes no keys, and only ghosts and moving statues. The Black Knight is also included, and the whole point of the level is to trap him by turning on the four switches right when he's around the magnet. I've found it's easiest to turn three on, wait until the Knight is right on top of the magnet (sometimes you have to act as bait and lure him there), then turn on the final switch so there's no chance of not catching him. The last aspect I forgot to mention is that the game does include the option of playing the "easy" or "hard" version, but honestly, I've tried both and it seems all up to circumstance of how many villains you face, and like there's nothing different. This is with the exception of the last game, The Dungeons of Fontecastello, which also includes snakes (completely absent from the easy version) beginning with level 2. This last one is my favorite, because it seems there's actually some strategy involved with it, and admittedly I just loved that the programmers included that unnecessary aspect. The ghosts in this level look super cool too! Overall, this is a pretty fun game with the exception of the Race and Castle games, which are completely up to chance and there's really no strategy involved. If anyone else has this game or remembers it, I'd love to know your thoughts! At long last, here's my review of "Cartoon Feud," the recent Teen Titans and Scooby-Doo crossover.
I really enjoyed this one far more than I thought! It was super clever of them to be satirical of how Cartoon Network plays Teen Titans Go! all the time, while not playing any classic cartoons. I liked how they joked about Frank Welker, and Scooby and Fred saying that someone named Frank would never voice them lol. The top answer being "Robin's baby hands" was quite amusing. Some of the other jokes were quite out there, like Fred wearing an ascot to hide Baron Von Billfold. The random cutaway gags were also a bit odd. I also found it fascinating that they called Control Freak a "futon critic," because The Futon Critic is a popular TV guide site that provides network's press releases for upcoming episodes of TV shows. I wonder if it was an intentional reference or just pure coincidence. They did a really good job using Scooby's formula as well, with the hallway gags and the unmasking at the end. Overall, I thought this was a great crossover and very clever at points. I'll admit I haven't kept up with the Scooby comics recently, mainly due to lack of interest with the overuse of stock art, but when Lance was kind enough to send me a copy of Team Up #50, I decided to read it and review it given the popularity of that particular issue.
I know a few people have asked me via email when I'm reviewing the recent Teen Titans / Scooby-Doo crossover that aired earlier this month, so I'll answer this here too in case anyone else may be wondering. I'm waiting for it to be posted on WCOStream (the new rebranded name for WatchCartoonOnline), who has unfortunately been incredibly slow in posting it. I am aware it's on other streaming sites such as KimCartoon and others, but I don't want to risk it, as recently their plethora of pop-up ads has been making my antivirus go crazy. That makes me a bit nervous, as I have heard horror stories of people getting viruses on their computers from pop-ups, and paying hundreds of dollars to repair the computer and get the virus removed. So for now I'm waiting for it to be posted on WCO, and I'm checking regularly so hopefully they post it soon so I can review it. But anyways, back to our main topic now! I really enjoyed this issue. I'll admit, I'm not used to reading comics (please don't take my nerd license away, haha) so this was a bit different for me. From this point on, there are spoilers, so don't read this review unless you've read it, or for some odd reason want it to be ruined for you even though you haven't read it yet. Villain-wise, even though it was good to see Scrappy again, I was bothered that they fell back on the old "haha Scrappy sucks!" trope. I feel that's been so overused now and can't understand why the writers still think that's funny 17 years after the live-action film where it began. I did, however, like seeing some of the old Scooby recurring characters like Vincent Van Ghoul, the Hex Girls and Flim Flam. Honestly, I never thought I'd see Robi again in a Scooby-related production, so that was a huge surprise! It was fun seeing all the versions of the gang interact with each other, but I wish they would have expanded on the dialogue a little more. Other than young Fred from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, and a few of the versions of Daphne, none of the character versions really said anything that differentiated themselves from the other versions. I must admit, I am getting sick of the quick nostalgia grabs so this could have clouded my opinion a bit, but I think this is the best "classic throwback" we've had in the 50th anniversary so far. Still, I didn't think it was super special. I felt they could have done so much more with the character interactions, but it felt rushed. There was a little bit of contrast between the versions in the final panel, when all the individual character versions group up by their character, but I would have liked to see more plot development there. Something like Cyber Chase maybe? As for Batman, he seemed pretty unnecessary and underutilized in this team up. Bat-Mite seemed to take center stage, so it's odd that Batman was the main credited one since he was barely used. I liked Mr. Camera, and thought he looked similar to the Night Ghoul from "The Night Ghoul of Wonderworld" from the 1979 Scrappy series. The joke about him just wanting to go to jail was amusing. Despite my criticisms of the issue, I didn't hate it and it was definitely fun. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like too many of these "throwbacks" for the 50th anniversary are choosing to just scratch the surface of the franchise rather than giving us an actual, fleshed-out return to classic aspects of the franchise that haven't been utilized in a while. What did you all think of the 50th and final issue of Team-Up? I quite enjoyed this episode overall. I'll admit I was surprised how much Batman was played up for comedy, but nonetheless it was still an entertaining half-hour.
Atmospherically, this felt a lot different than previous episodes of Guess Who. I've heard that this episode was the series premiere in other countries, which leads me think maybe it was made first. I enjoyed the overall location of Wayne Manor in terms of it feeling sufficiently spooky. Batman was an enjoyable guest star, even if he was a bit zanier this time around. I really enjoyed that they used a different villain than Joker and Penguin this time, especially given the monstrous qualities of the Man-Bat, so I was a bit disappointed that it just turned out to be the Joker again. In terms of the characters, I thought Daphne's relation to Alfred was unnecessary. The gang being related to every single guest star on the planet doesn't seem necessary, and I wish the writers would come up with a different reason for the gang to be teaming up with these guest stars. Scooby's monologue-length comments in this episode really irritated me. I've mentioned it before, but it's so out-of-character for him to be speaking constantly. Maybe this is just me, but it bothered me that Scooby was so upset over his phone breaking, and the fact that he had a phone in the first place. It feels weird to think of Scooby obsessed with his cell phone haha. Overall, this episode was pretty solid though it wasn't my favorite of the series. The reference to the first episode's title was fun, though the extraneous comma in the title card ("What a Night, for a Dark Knight!") is odd. I'm not sure if this is truly the end of season 1, or if Boomerang is just calling it that. I'm not sure if anyone remembers, but with Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Cartoon Network claimed that episode 13 was the end of season 1, and episode 14 began season 2. Officially, season 1 of SDMI lasted 26 episodes, so I'm not sure if that's the case here too. Let's update the scoreboard for one last time this season! Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! (Favorite episode) 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 4. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 5. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 6. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 7. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 8. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 9. Quit Clowning! 10. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 11. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 12. The Fastest Food Fiend! 13. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided (Least favorite episode) Overall, my season-end thoughts are that while I enjoyed the series, I felt the writers were trying a bit too hard sometimes to be nostalgic and it just didn't work for me. I would really like to see them try something new, or explore some new aspect of the franchise rather than just trying to make it a carbon copy of how the original show was. I don't think we'll get it with this series, but I truly hope that they choose to branch off into a different direction in the future, even if just slightly. "Quit Clowning!" turned out to be a great episode in some ways, but a very poor one in other ways.
First off, the location and atmosphere of this episode really makes it feel like a classic New Scooby-Doo Movies mystery, more so than any of the previous episodes IMO. Fred, Daphne and Velma acted a ton like they did in the New Scooby-Doo Movies. The villain, Pazzo the Clown, was genuinely super creepy and I like how it looked similar to the Ghost Clown from Where Are You. The references to Thundarr the Barbarian and the Herculoids on the wall of the TV station were really cool as well! I thought it was super cool they had Daphne wear Jeannie's costume as a disguise. Jeannie appeared in "Mystery in Persia" from the original The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which is a pretty obscure reference and I'm impressed they went with it! I didn't enjoy Kenan Thompson though. His jokes were painfully unfunny, and I think I may have lost an IQ point or two listening to his poor attempt at rapping. His charisma and personality were good, but all his jokes were very cringeworthy. I would have enjoyed the episode more if a different celebrity than Kenan was in it, as he really dragged the episode down IMO. No other complaints with the episode really, other than Velma's hearty laughter at the kid getting pied in the face was a bit awkward. It really wasn't funny at all, so I'm not sure what the writers were thinking there. I'm putting this one just above "Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors," but Kenan really dragged this episode down from being any higher than that. I feel bad ranking him above Wanda Sykes, who was actually a good celebrity, and Ricky Gervais, who wasn't as offensive as Kenan, but I'm ranking it here solely due to the rest of the episode being pretty good. "Quit Clowning!" is also a pretty dumb title IMO. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 4. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 5. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 6. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 7. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 8. Quit Clowning! 9. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 10. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 11. The Fastest Food Fiend! 12. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided I must say that this was an excellent episode! One of my favorites so far. Weird Al was a great guest star. His accordion songs were all pretty funny and didn't get old, and I particularly liked when he started playing the theremin instead. I'll admit I'm a fan of Weird Al in general, so this episode just worked for me. The dinosaur was a pretty cool-looking villain. I enjoyed the twist at the end where there were actually two dinosaurs, though it of course made it pretty easy to guess the culprits. Nothing much to say about the gang this week, other than it seemed fitting for Shaggy and Scooby to be fans of Weird Al. It bothered me a bit though that Shaggy kept repeating some variation of "It's that crazy dinosaur!" Just seemed like lazy writing to me. I enjoyed the location of the camp, and especially the mines. Definitely was a good setting for a villain such as this. I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, but Boomerang and TV guide sites have screwed up on the titles of both of the last two episodes now. The title card reads "The Fastest Food Fiend!" for episode 9, though Boomerang and other sites call it "The Fastest Fast Food Fiend!" (there was no extra "Fast" in the title). With this episode, Boomerang and other TV guide sites have been referring to it as "Attack of the Weird Al-Losaurus!" (with an extra 'l'), though the title card clearly says "Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus!" with only one 'l'. Always frustrates me when they mess up stuff like this, since you know the wrong title is probably going to be the one remembered and included in show records a decade or so down the road. And also makes it tough for me, as I've had the incorrect title now for both episodes and then later had to change it to the correct one once I saw the title card. Now it's time to update our Star-Studded Scoreboard! Note that since this review did technically go up 2 days after episode 11's, you can check out the now-updated scoreboard on that review post. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 4. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 5. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 6. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 7. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 8. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 9. The Fastest Food Fiend! 10. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided And to make up for the fact that this review is posted a bit late, and out-of-order, I'll tag two of my favorite Weird Al Yankovic songs on to the end of this review. Enjoy! Before you ask, yep, I do know I haven't posted a review for episode 10 yet. I typically watch these on WatchCartoonOnline, though they've been extra slow in posting the Weird Al episode for whatever reason. I know it is available on KimCartoon and other such sites, though I don't really trust those sites anymore. A Scooby fan friend of mine claimed to have gotten a virus off of KimCartoon last year and had to pay $200 to get the virus removed, so ever since I've been a bit skeptical of it. WatchCartoonOnline doesn't seem to have any pop-up ads so I've stuck with that one.
Anyways, this was a sort of 'meh' episode for me. I had heard of Sia previously, and had listened to some of her more famous songs such as "Titanium," "Wild Ones," "Chandelier," "Elastic Heart," "Bang My Head," "Cheap Thrills," "The Greatest" and "Thunderclouds." I'll admit, with the exception of "The Greatest" I was never a huge fan of her music. In this episode, I thought it was a bit odd how wacky she was with her urgent pauses, and various wacky antics such as bouncing on a large ball down the hallway. Those gags got a bit old after a while. The villain, however, was super cool and creepy. The scene where she's in the bedroom with Scooby and Shaggy was legitimately pretty terrifying. It was once again super easy to guess who it was, however. The atmosphere itself was definitely spooky, given it was night time. I love when they use big haunted mansions in Scooby as the location, so that was a big plus for me. The gang was once again very two dimensional, particularly Daphne, Velma and Fred, who went back to almost being interchangeable in dialogue again. This episode wasn't particularly offensive to me and I didn't dislike it like the Funky Phantom episode, but I also felt it was very forgettable and there was nothing really special or interesting about it either. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 4. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 5. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 6. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 7. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 8. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 9. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 10. The Fastest Food Fiend! 11. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided I finished watching Return to Zombie Island on Wednesday, and I must say I have mixed feelings about this film.
I feel like the film doesn't really work at all as a sequel to Zombie Island like they set it up to be. The tone is completely inconsistent with the original, and several details, like in Curse of the 13th Ghost, have significant continuity errors. Some examples of this are Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake being a "school project," their trip to Moonscar Island as a "summer vacation" and Simone and Lena's house being a hotel with a guest book that the gang apparently signed last visit, which they didn't. However, on its own as a standalone film, the movie is pretty decent. I really enjoyed some of the references, especially the one to Reluctant Werewolf and that we got some old Zombie Island footage redone in the current animation. I particularly enjoyed Alan as a character, and the movie had sort of a spooky tone. It was cool there was at least some continuity with the last film about them giving away the Mystery Machine. One thing I hated about the film is Velma claiming everything was fake again. I don't like that they've added this to her character now. It would make sense to have her be a little skeptic, but she's so overbearing that it almost seems like she's in denial. I also didn't like the design of the zombies or cat creatures. They seemed more silly-looking than scary, which was one thing I felt did the first film a terrible injustice. I was really hoping for a sequel to Zombie Island that was similar in its dark and mature tone, but after Curse of the 13th Ghost, tbh my hopes were pretty low and they were for the most part achieved. I thought it was cool they got Elvira to guest star in this, especially after they parodied her in LEGO Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood a few years back. Overall, the film was pretty lackluster as a sequel to one of the most widely loved films of the Scooby franchise. But for the most part, with the exception of the glaring continuity errors, the film was harmless even though there was absolutely no point in doing it besides a nostalgic cash grab for the 50th anniversary. That being said, I'll just add a little disclaimer here to end my review. My hopes were pretty low for this film, but in general, I was disappointed that they didn't try to make legitimate sequels to both 13 Ghosts and Zombie Island. It seemed like WB was going for the nostalgia factor with this year's DTVs, but then wanted to put in as little work as humanly possible into making them true sequels, or even consistent with the original. My opinion is that Scooby-Doo needs a drastic shakeup in the writer's room, with some new people that truly care about the franchise and have some ideas which legitimately cater to the adults still interested in Scooby-Doo. Explore some new territory in the franchise, experiment a bit, and don't just go with safe nostalgia but not bother to put the work in. (This somewhat goes for Guess Who as well) I would genuinely like to see either completely unexplored territory in the Scooby franchise tested out, or maybe go back to some of the old stuff with some actual research done on the tone of the original work. |
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