The great
challenge in adapting Scooby Doo has to be in giving
the audience something they've never seen before. Really,
after watching any three episodes, any two, actually any one,
you've pretty much got the gist of what's going on with this
talking dog and the mystery-solving youths that investigate
every odd occurrence in their town except, apparently, that
they have a talking dog.
To give
us something new in the first film,
director Raja Gosnell and writers Craig Titley (story only)
and James Gunn deconstructed the whole thing, breaking the
gang apart only to have them discover that they work really
well as a team. Minus, of course, Scrappy Doo. Many fans cried
foul. (Hypocrites - acting as if they considered Scrappy to
be the Jupiter Jones of Mystery, Inc.)
This
time around, in Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, it's
pretty much the same players behind the scenes and in front
of the cameras. (Gunn, admittedly an acquaintance of this
reviewer, has solo credit as writer.) Everybody seems more
relaxed; certainly Freddie Prinze, Jr. couldn't be bothered
to do his hair.
Freed
from the constraints of establishing the characters for the
screen, everybody can now do what they wanted: just give us
an episode of Scooby Doo. But not just any episode;
this is the mondo super greatest hits that Hanna-Barbera never
dared do, mainly because when the animators were doing this
show, they had little idea that anybody would actually remember
its continuity.
So Gunn
crafts a plot that brings back some of the more famous ghosts
from the past. (My personal favorite, the laughing skull astronaut,
is missing.) At the opening of a museum exhibit dedicated
to the exploits of Mystery, Ink, the infamous Pterodactyl
Ghost appears to wreak havoc. Only instead of it being a costume,
Velma (Linda Cardellini) surmises that somehow it has become
an actual pterodactyl.
Through
a series of clues, the meaning of which get repeated over
and over in an only slightly more subtle fashion than an episode
of Blue's Clues, the gang surmises that someone has
discovered a way to bring back their most infamous cases as
actual monsters. Sure, the original costumes have to be used,
but these things really have supernatural powers now.
But who
could be behind such a dastardly plot? Is it Old Man Wickles
(a brilliantly cast Peter Boyle)? Perhaps his cellmate, the
original, and yet dead, Pterodactyl Ghost, aka Professor
Jacobo, played in flashback by Tim Blake Nelson? (If that
incomplete sentence seems too complex and unwieldy, well,
so does the list of suspects.)
Or could
it be …the museum curator? In that role, Seth Green does his
best to make sure that the color of his hair matches the color
of his herring.
Along
the way, Gunn and Gosnell also deliver everything the Scooby
Doo fan could possibly want. There's the great running over
an empty space before gravity kicks in. When trying to tiptoe
through a creepy, sporadically lit space, make sure that each
time Shaggy and Scooby and their pursuers appear, they're
all in wacky different positions. Once things go to a full-blown
chase scene, it had better be a montage with some cheesy pop
song over it. Gang, it's all there. Rejoice.
The adult
subtext has been pulled back a bit, too, though there are
still a couple of references to Shaggy's (Matthew Lillard)
obvious predilection for altered states. Shaggy also skirts
the edge of swearing a time or two, but nothing particularly
harsh.
When
Velma, in an effort to appear more sexy to Green's curator,
Patrick, pours herself into blue leather, it may underscore
how truly hot Cardellini is, but most of the kids should just
find it funny, especially once the flatulence jokes kick in.
Purists
may argue that such toilet humor has no place in a Scooby
Doo film. At least this time around, Scooby's flatulence (and
man, big dogs like that do pass gas a lot) serves the
action instead of stopping it dead. And when Disney has a
boob joke in the trailer for Home On The Range,
it's hard to really get outraged.
Put it
aside. There's fun to be had in giving the kids safe shivers,
and a decent message behind the film as Shaggy and Scooby
struggle to find their worth as heroes. Once again, Cardellini
and Lillard inhabit their cartoon character roles so well,
it's worth a heartfelt "jinkies!" A couple of subplots go
nowhere, one so obviously that even kids might notice, but
just as quickly they will get distracted by the action and
the colors.
And if
you think the T.V. show really did anything more than
that, you're barking up the wrong tree. Shut up and have another
Scooby snack.
