Review of Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004) by Gareth R — 29 Nov 2010

There isn't a whole heck of a lot to say about the second Scooby Doo movie. It is better, I suppose, than the first one: the plot isn't quite so shoddy and weird as before, and it more closely follows the template of the original TV show. In fact, with a host of genuine Scooby Doo baddies on the rampage, it just generally looks and sounds more like the cartoon. This is a good thing.

These characters are much more at home in creepy old mansions and deserted mines, and it's to these locations that Monsters Unleashed sends them - not to a pleasant island resort, as was the case in the first movie. We even get to see Mystery Inc. HQ, which appears to be a kind of Austin Powers pad, a mixture of modern high-tech and '60s fashion. It adds to the weird meeting of styles that is Scooby Doo circa 2004, and it works.

The dialogue is always going to be haphazard in a movie mostly aimed at undemanding little'uns, but it will occasionally surprise you with gleams of wit amid the dumb dross. Peter Boyle gets a few choice lines as a cranky ex-villain, and as before, some of Scooby's silly outbursts will make you laugh. A moment where Scooby and Shaggy come up against a monster made entirely of candyfloss is worth it simply for their expressions.

But once again, it's strictly hit and miss, and for every hearty chuckle there are a couple of weird misses. A dance routine, which sees Scooby dressed in disco duds complete with an afro wig, bypasses funny altogether and is simply weird. The requisite fart gags return, alas, along with at least one tumbleweed-unfunny snot gag.

The movie's real problem, however, is that the characters don't learn anything here that they didn't know already from the first movie. Once again it is wisely Velma-heavy - Linda Cardellino playing the only member of Mystery Inc. with depths - but the things her character learns are all kind of arbitrary, and the more time we spend with her, the more we realise that Fred and Daphne (Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar) have simply stagnated. Jokes and an entire sub-plot about Scooby and Shaggy's pointlessness hail a little too close to the truth, and there's no real conclusion at the end of it. Why yes, they ARE just a couple of dumb doofuses! Big deal - what did Fred or Daphne ever really do that was useful?

The cast know precisely what they're doing, having done all this once before. (Sarah Michelle Gellar even more so, Daphne having now gone even further down the Buffy path, going so far as to develop a Willow-style friendship with Velma.) The story may not grow or deepen any of the characters, but they're good at what they do. Best is Matthew Lillard, who manages to engage and emote with CGI Scooby so well, he sells the illusion completely. (His scenes work even better if you remind yourself the guy had to basically talk to himself the whole time.) I still quite like CGI Scooby.

The plot, concerning a madman's attempt to bring monster-suits to life, does work better than the plot of the first movie. In fact, considering the major gimmick there was that the monsters were real after all, this is basically the same thing, but with less vague mumbo-jumbo stringing it together. It's not exactly a world apart from the last movie, but then what two episodes of the cartoon series are massively different, plotwise?

Unoriginality isn't the issue here - it's structure. Scooby Doo 2 has difficulty lasting the full 90 minutes, and begins to buckle towards the end, straining to fling enough incident at the screen. A couple of clever red herrings certainly help it along the way, but it's somewhat difficult to detect when the movie is making its home stretch. There's very little momentum at any point.

It's quite funny, the special effects are occasionally pretty good (when they're not rubbish), and the cast appear to be enjoying themselves once again. But it only really came alive for me in a scene showing one of the old villains in his rickety monster costume, in the good old days when there was still a guy under the mask. Still, I can't complain: Scooby Doo 2 does have the decency to end with one of those "In reality, it was none other than..." rubber mask reveals. How I missed them.