Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Scoob!’ On Demand, a Neo-Nostalgic Regurgitation of Your Favorite Stupid Cartoon Characters

Its theatrical release derailed due to that meddling pandemic, Scoob! hits on-demand services, no doubt hoping to replicate Trolls World Tour‘s financially lucrative at-home/quarantine debut. Creatively speaking, this animated reboot/reset/regurge intends to drag a totally dated, yet weirdly timeless property into the modern day via typically nonsensical means — bringing some crappy old 1970s Hanna-Barbera characters back into Scooby’s sphere, of course. So the movie hopes to suck 20 bucks out of not just families’ wallets, but also aging nostalgics yearning for some top-shelf Laff-a-Lympics Easter eggs.

SCOOB!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: One sunny day on the Venice Beach boardwalk, a stray pup steals a wad of gyro meat off its spit, and ends up sharing his meat with a lonely boy who forgot to put the protein on his sandwiches. That scrappy petty thief was Scooby-Doo, and the lonely boy was Shaggy, and they became fast friends, forever bonded by their inexhaustible appetites for carbohydrates. One gloomy Halloween evening, while retrieving Shaggy’s bag of candy from a haunted house, they met a trio of pals, Fred, Velma and Daphne. The rest is history. Stupid, stupid history.

Yes, we just witnessed a Scooby Gang origin story, because we can’t enjoy something without one; the Scooby franchise’s 50-year legacy is officially no longer a joyless and empty experience. Scooch ahead a few years, and the kids are now teenagers voiced by adult celebrities: Will Forte is Shaggy, Gina Rodriguez is Velma, Zac Efron is Fred, Amanda Seyfried is Daphne and legendary voice actor Frank Welker is Scooby, even though he was Fred in the original cartoons. They make some self-aware, deconstructive comments (including, but not limited to, some next-level ascot jokes), imply that Scoob once deuced in their retro-van, the Mystery Machine, and engage with a cartoon version of Simon Cowell for some reason. And then Shag and Scoob are kidnapped by someone with a bunch of little robots in his employ.

That someone is Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs) who, when Scooby’s speech impediment renders him “Rick,” asserts, “I am a Dick!” Because Dastardly is a supervillain resurrected from old cartoons, a superhero must also be resurrected from old cartoons, namely, Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg) and his buddies, robot dog Dynomutt (Ken Jeong) and falcon-jet captain Dee Dee (Kiersey Clemons), a character new to the Dooniverse. INVENTORY ASIDE: In sync with the original Blue Falcon cartoons of the ’70s, this Blue Falcon is actually the son of the original Blue Falcon, although the Scooby Gang are still teenagers, making the timelines totally screwy, so perhaps the Gang has discovered the secret to immortality? (Infer away, dorks!) Anyway, the new Blue Falcon is vain and incompetent, and the new Dynomutt is his intellectual superior, reversing their original dynamic. So there’s plenty of fodder here to inspire the Blue Falcon Traditionalist Legion to launch an anti-Scoob! internet campaign that makes them seem millions strong when they actually number in the single digits.

I digress. The plot has something to do with Scooby being a descendant of Alexander the Great’s dog, which perhaps functions as an unfortunate metaphor for human progress. Velma, Fred and Daphne attempt to suss out the whereabouts of their friends, which gives them just enough screen time for us to notice the minor updates to their wardrobes and appreciate the lost art of airbrushed van art. Will there be unmaskings? NAY, SPOILERS, I SAY NAY.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I dunno — what other franchises started off as cartoons, were turned into live-action abominations and then reverted back to cartoons? Garfield? The Smurfs? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The Flintstones? Popeye?!?

Performance Worth Watching: Tracy Morgan drops in for a voice cameo as [REDACTED], a character who will probably get a spinoff series on Netflix.

Memorable Dialogue: Dynomutt gets a load of the Mystery Machine: “Where did that anachronistic van come from?”

Sex and Skin: Scooby remains anatomically incorrect.

Our Take: Cue the relentlessly overanalytical hot takes on the power and the glory of the original Scooby-Doo, and how Scoob! utterly bastardizes the classic jokes and character dynamics, all the while ignoring how those 41 TV episodes (yes, 41; it sure seems like 400, doesn’t it?) featured the same plot every time. Your nostalgia is noted. It is valid. But it is not everything. This movie is not great. But neither will it grab your childhood by the hair and slit its throat. Your memories will remain potently bittersweet. You will be OK. I repeat: You will be OK.

Don’t, however, mistake this as a spirited defense of Scoob!. I mean, Scooby-Doo speaks in full sentences, which is disconcerting at best. The MPAA’s alert that the movie is rated PG for “rude/suggestive humor” is actually founded for once (maybe I don’t want my five-year-old to hear a few of these things?). Dastardly and his diaper-baby robots feel derivative of Gru and his Minions. Velma’s knee-high socks have been replaced with knee-high boots, which is blasphemous. And although it resurrects some garbage Hanna-Barbera characters from 1970s Saturday-morning cartoons long forgotten, it does not bring back Grape Ape, the Clue Club, Inch High Private Eye, Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, Hong Kong Phooey, the Robonic Stooges, Godzuki, the Herculoids or Speed Buggy, and fails to include a guest appearance by the Harlem Globetrotters — clearly a gross failure to stoke obscurist nostalgia. That’s what Scoob! II is for, I guess.

Then again, maybe throwing all those characters into the movie would’ve just kept Shag and Scoob off the screen even more than they already are. They’re in the backseat for a goodly chunk of the shenanigans here, which takes them away from the rest of the Gang for half the movie, and even renders the two of them asunder for a third-act break-up-and-make-up plot. Subtextually, the film addresses the eternally adamantine bond between dog and man, but you may have to shovel away some pterodactyl ejecta to get to it. I dunno, whatever, maybe grade-schoolers without the baggage of decades of contextual bric-a-brac might enjoy it.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Sure, Scoob! is colorful and visually dynamic — but so is every other animated movie out there. Bottom line, I laughed twice, maybe three times. Scooby-dooby-don’t!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to Watch Scoob! On Demand