Scooby-Doo
Fans of the Saturday morning mainstay ''Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?'' are a long-suffering bunch. Since the original 1969-1972 run of the Hanna- Barbera cartoon, they've endured more than their unfair share of inane canine relatives (Scooby-Dum, Scrappy Doo, Scooby-Dee), prequels (''A Pup Named Scooby-Doo''), and cornball direct-to-video releases (''Scooby-Doo and the Witches Closet'').
So when word came down that Warner Bros. was giving Mystery Inc. a live-action makeover, it didn't take long for disgruntled fans to take to the Internet. For a while, it looked as if their grousing was justified: An early Mike Myers-penned script was quickly dropped, the Latino hunk Freddie Prinze Jr. was tapped to play WASPy Fred, and - zoinks! - Scooby was going high-tech as an unrecognizable computer-animated version of his former self.
But while this ''Scooby-Doo'' isn't as doomed as the ghost haunting the old Weatherby Mansion - as live-action remakes go, it's superior to the abysmal ''Josie and the Pussycats'' - this dog will inevitably let down purists looking for the elusive combination of smart and funny.
The film opens with the clue-crazed fivesome burned out and at each other's throats. After being split up for two years, Mystery Inc. is reluctantly reunited at an amusement park called Spooky Island, brought in by owner Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson, channeling Pee-Wee Herman and Ricardo Montalban) to find out why its college patrons are leaving the park as brainwashed drones with a poor grasp of white-boy suburban slang.
The sleuths may purchase their Day-Glo duds in the same thrift stores as the Brady Bunch, but their movie personas are far less clueless. Writer James Gunn smartly injects these characters with far more personality than they ever exhibited on Saturday morning. Fred (Prinze, looking ridiculous and pasty as a blond) has become a self-promoting media tramp whose shameless spotlight-stealing aggravates brainy Velma (''Freaks and Geeks'' star Linda Cardellini) no end, while Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is far more vapid than she ever was in animated form. Only Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby, still obsessed with Scooby snacks and foot-long grinders - remain true to their drawing-board roots.
''Scooby-Doo,'' however, is marred by an identity crisis. It doesn't know if it wants to be a kid's movie, a teen movie, or a cartoon geek's delight. Director Raja Gosnell (''Big Mama's House'') attempts all these genres with varying degrees of success. So a well-choreographed ''Indiana Jones''-style action sequence is followed by an endless farting contest between Shaggy and Scooby, while the multiple, forced drug references fail to add much humor.
Fortunately, stellar performances from Lillard and Cardellini help to keep the ridiculous story moving. Lillard's Shaggy is spot on, and he conveys a surprising amount of genuine emotion in his relationship with his computer-generated, four-legged friend. And while Prinze and Gellar are purely two-dimensional, Cardellini's Velma is as bright and colorful as her omnipresent orange cowl neck.
The performances are not enough to keep the film out of Scrappy waters. The novelty of seeing these characters on the big screen is occasionally fun, but this ''Scooby-Doo'' is no Great Dane.
Video
