Film Review - Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo is a contemporary existentialist musing on the banality and essential paradox of the human condition, featuring a brown dog. The film stars Sarah-Michelle Gellar, Sandy Jardine, Craig Levein and Scooby Doo, as himself. There is also an appearance by Erika Eleniak, who plays the part of Rowan Atkinson.

This latter-day Homeric odyssey focuses on the relationships between each of the main characters and the plot is merely a device to support several set-pieces of character interactivitationalism. The main characters are the five components of the ‘Scooby Gang’ as it is know by media-savvy types. They are; Scooby himself; Daphne, played by Gellar; Velma, played by some bint and Fred and Shaggy, played by Sandy Jardine and Craig Levein, respectively. The casting of Jardine and Levein is transparently an attempt to recreate some of the chemistry from their 86/87 season in midfield for Heart of Midlothian. As you are no doubt aware the 86/87 season was a career-high for Jardine and it came hot on the heels of Levein’s Scottish Young Player of the Year award for the 85/86 season. There is no way of rolling back the years, however and the casting smacks of desperation.

The plot, as was mentioned, is functional at best. It closely follows the framework of all Scooby Doo cartoons. Mysterious evil is afoot. The gang is called to solve the mystery. They do. There is quite a large amount of on-screen time to pad out then and this seemed to be a bridge too far for the producers. Mostly the characters just mock each other. At times they appear to get on, but then, usually mid-sentence, one of the four human participants will suddenly lunge at Scooby Doo, without provocation and proceed to kick the crap out of him, whilst the others look on. The purpose of these attacks, which take place fifty-seven times, is unclear. Is it meant to indicate man’s changeable nature? After all, Scooby Doo is never seen to attack anyone, or is it meant to show man’s hatred of his own animal nature, symbolised by Doo?

The other recurrent theme is moodily lit black and white footage of two unseen persons playing tiddly-winks to a soundtrack of screams. I don’t know if something was lost in the editing process, but this went way over my head. Perhaps that was the intention: to delineate man’s intrinsic ignorance of all things. More likely it was stipulated in Craig Levein’s contract that such scenes would appear. Craig is a notorious tiddly-winks enthusiast and he also likes screaming. The film would probably be more coherent without this aspect, yet it does hold the interest, if only through the viewer’s intrigue.

If you like rope ladders, marmots and flicking maroon paint at strangers’ trench coats then this film is for you. If you are a fan of the work of Steve the Curlew, then you should give it a miss.