Scooby-Doo and Krypto, Too! Review

Yes, you read the title correctly. In a shocking turn of events, Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too! was suddenly leaked in full online today. I'm imagining what may have happened is that Mystery Pups getting its distribution cancelled after the show was deep in development was the final straw for somebody at WB, and they leaked the film. Either way, this is very surprising news and a first in the 54 years of the franchise.

To be entirely honest, I wasn't particularly sure whether I should post this review or not since I am unsure if there'd be any issue with discussing an unreleased movie. However, I've heard some other folks in the fandom have created videos and even posted clips from the leak online, so I assume it's okay to simply talk about the film even if it hasn't been released. Just to be safe though, I want to provide a disclaimer that all information from this post comes from my good friend, Johnny. I would never, ever watch an unreleased film and when my friend Johnny told me that he had, I gave him a hefty scolding about the dangers of watching non-official content (but only after he told me a detailed summary of the entire film) lol. (Seriously though, if anyone who worked on the film happens to be reading this and has an issue with me talking about a film that was not released, please feel free to let me know and I'll be happy to take this article down immediately if it poses any issue)

Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too! was a great film, and I would argue that this is how a crossover should be done. In most crossovers, the guest star is coming into Scooby's universe, so it was neat that this film felt like the gang was going into Superman's universe. The film follows the gang trying to rescue the Justice League, after the appearance of a golden ghost. The Legion of Doom is also here, meaning there are quite a few villains of the film. Most of them don't show up a lot, but notably Scooby thinks Solomon Grundy is The Creeper, and Fred has a crush on Harley Quinn. I found it interesting that Fraphne was more heavily implied here than in any other movie other than Stage Fright. It's still kind of an unspoken thing between them, but Fred has a lot of jealousy over Daphne's former love interest, Jimmy Jones, and Daphne seems to acknowledge that Fred is jealous.

I am not really a big DC fan personally, so I do not know a lot about that universe other than I've seen the recent films, and plan to see Shazam when it comes out. Despite that, I thought the film was still appealing even to someone who does not have a lot of familiarity with DC. The scenes with the gang in the Daily Planet were nice, and it was interesting to see the gang's interactions with some of the heroes and villains.

Krypto was the star of the film for me. Despite not talking, he was such a cute character and his friendship with Scooby was adorable. The film framed the gang as knowing all the other heroes and villains, yet they did not know Krypto which I was surprised by. There's a brief aside from Daphne where she says "we know Batman," which seems to be a reference either to the current line of comics, or their previous times meeting Batman in the episodes and films. I particularly thought Krypto shined during the scene with a "Kitchen of Superfriends," which is a holographic room that manifests whatever you say. It was cool to see him save the day and come to the rescue, even when Shaggy and Scooby were unable to.

Lex Luthor and Rex Luthor (his dog lol) were perhaps the most notable and interesting characters here. It's referenced that Lex was former president of the United States, which I know is canon from the DC universe. There's sort of an odd joke made where Lex brags about how much power he has as president, and Velma says "but you didn't win the popular vote!", which oddly felt like a reference to the recent political landscape haha. There's a gag where Lex Luthor keeps getting lost, and to be entirely honest, that was the only part of the movie that wasn't great. The joke wasn't really even that funny the first time, so I don't know why they needed to keep going back to it. Compared to Velma's humor though, literally anything would be an improvement, so it didn't bother me that much.

Another improvement over past movies is that I didn't feel hit over the head with references. I don't know what it was like for those who are familiar with DC, but I found the few that they included to be cute, like the "Challenge of the Superfries" restaurant and the smoke spelling "happy birthday Second Robin!" when Fred activated Batman's belt. Speaking of which, Batman is nowhere to be found in this film, and even the Justice League is not in any part of the film until the last five minutes. Only Superman and Wonder Woman speak, and the rest have non-speaking roles. It becomes kind of funny at the end, as during the final moment of the movie, Scooby says his catchphrase and Krypto barks, while The Flash just randomly stands there smiling, not saying anything lol. 

I have a few other random comments that I wrote down, the first of those being that the Scooby Snax box design from Cyber Chase is used in this film, I believe for the first time in 20+ years, which was a really interesting touch. Fred's catchphrase "Hold the phone" is seemingly gone (thankfully, I never liked that tbh), as there's a joke mid-way through the film where all the gang says their catchphrases and Fred just says "run!" I liked the chase song quite a bit. One oddly funny bit in the film that was among my favorites is when Scooby asks "Shaggy, are we strays?" after Velma says Krypto is probably a stray, and Shaggy gets the most serious look in his eyes and flatly says "yep" lol.

I won't go too much into this bit as not to ruin anything about the ending, but the twist at the end was fun. I admit I kinda saw part of it coming, but there were still parts that were surprising, and I didn't expect the gold ghost to be who it was. It was really fascinating how the gang gives the explanation of the ghost being "swamp gas" to Lex; it almost felt like it was mocking Return to Zombie Island for Velma giving that explanation, as "swamp gas" seems so oddly specific, and they weren't even in a swamp.

Overall, I really liked how this movie felt like a shared universe between the Justice League and Scooby-Doo, and neither one overshadowed the other. In fact, I feel like the Justice League being absent for all but the last five minutes, and giving focus to the side characters like Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, allowed the mystery to develop in a more natural way where it did not feel like the guest star was out of place or dominating the episode, like it sometimes did in Guess Who. The film felt quite cinematic and I have to say I really enjoyed this. I'd probably rank it at #26 in my movie rankings, above Chill Out but below Pirates Ahoy.

It's such a shame this will likely never be released, and it's even more of a bummer to think about the fact that the only thing coming up right now seems to be Velma season 2. It's very weird to think that a finished film like this is just going to float out there in the abyss, never seeing the light of day, but today has probably been one of the most action-packed days in the franchise between Mystery Pups losing its distribution rights and an unreleased Scooby-Doo movie getting leaked for the first time ever on the same day. It will be a weird road forward, and I wish I would have better appreciated the plethora of Scooby media we got in 2021 given we ended up going in a direction with barely any Scooby content last year, and it's increasingly looking like the same this year. However, I'm hopeful we can get back to a spot where we are getting at least one DTV a year, and have some Scooby content on the horizon.