Scooby-Doo: The Movie (2002) – Review

With over three decades of various incarnations of Scooby-Doo, it’s actually quite surprising that it took Hollywood this long to try for a live-action version of Mystery Incorporated – one could assume that they were waiting for computer graphics to reach a certain point where an animated Scooby-Doo would work in live-action but they could easily have gone the Who Framed Roger Rabbit route and no one would have blinked – yet when we finally did get our first theatrically released live-action Scooby-Doo the end result was less than stellar.

The movie starts with a cold open as we are dropped into “Mystery of the Luna Ghost” where we find the Scooby gang wrapping up the mystery and revealing that the ghost was just Old Man Smithers the janitor of Wow-O Toy Factory “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!”  This seems like a standard happy conclusion but there is trouble in paradise as Velma (Linda Cardellini) is pissed off at Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) for taking credit for her solving the mystery and Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is quick to point out that she is fed-up with constantly being kidnapped, and this results in the group breaking up, much to the chagrin of Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo (Neil Fanning) who hate to see their friends abandon them.

 

“Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

The movie then jumps ahead a couple of years where we learn that the gang have all been invited, unbeknownst to each other, to solve a mystery at the popular resort Spooky Island, owned by Emile Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson) who needs Mystery Inc. to be reunited so that they can uncover the sinister plot behind the apparent brainwashing of the teenage visitors to his island resort. The gang are reticent about working as a team again and break off to prove that they can solve the mystery on their own, which leads to Daphne encountering Voodoo Maestro (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.), who warns her not to go into the Spooky Island Castle, advice which she of course ignores, resulting in her meeting up the rest of the Scooby gang who all somehow end up at Spooky Island Castle.
This does lead to one of the best moments in the film, where Daphne tries to recruit Shaggy and Scooby to inspect the castle but they are quite set against the idea, "Like, Scoob and me don't do castles. Because castles have paintings with eyes that watch you, and suits of armour you think is a statue with a guy inside that follows you every time you turn around!”

Note: Shaggy is not wrong, those instances were in the very first Scooby-Doo episode, "What a Night for a Knight."

On the mystery side of things there isn’t much going on in this particular Scooby-Doo movie, the gang quickly discover that someone is using a pyramid-shaped artifact called the Daemon Ritus to steal remove the souls of the park guests and replace them with that of demon and that the closed down Spooky Castle ride is being used as some sort of indoctrination facility to teach the demons how to act like regular teenagers.

We aren’t given much in the way of suspects aside the park's resident Voodoo host N' Goo Tuana (Steven Grives), who claims that the island was once ruled by ancient demons that have been plotting their revenge ever since they were displaced when Mondavarious built the resort but aside from him all we have is the aforementioned Voodoo Maestro who pops in and out of the movie with absolutely no explanation for his existence. Is he a park employee or an original island inhabitant? We never find out.

 

“You can buy one of these at one of our many gift shops.”

Emile Mondavarious is floated as being a potential suspect, mainly because he creeps Fred out, but as he was the one to invite them to the island this doesn’t make much sense…that is unless he needed them on the island for some nefarious purpose. It’s quite clear that Scooby-Doo: The Movie isn’t trying to do anything other than cash in on childhood nostalgia and director Ras Gosnell and screenwriter James Gunn were pretty hampered by the studio in what they could and couldn’t do with the Scooby property – James Gunn has since revealed that there was an “R” rated draft of this movie but fear of angry moms prevented this from ever happening – and the end result was a rather tepid Scooby-Doo adventure that thought to throw the much-maligned character of Scrappy-Doo under the bus would please older Scooby-Doo fans and make up for the film’s otherwise complete lack of balls.

 

Scrappy does get a bit of an upgrade in this film.

That’s right folks, the villain of this piece is Scooby's estranged nephew Scrappy-Doo (Scott Innes) who orchestrated this whole thing so as to capture his uncle Scooby’s “pure soul” that would allow him to rule the world for the next ten thousand years. Or check into a psycho ward, whichever comes first. Turns out that Mondavarious who hired the gang was just a robot shell that Scrappy had been operating from within and that this whole thing was a massive revenge plot that started way back when Scrappy got kicked out of Mystery Incorporated for peeing on Daphne, which is something none of needed to see. Note, the filmmakers were forced by the studio to have Velma state that Scrappy-Doo, “Was sadly corrupted by the Daemon Ritus” to appease distraught mothers who hated the idea of Scrappy being turned into a straight-out villain.

 

Yet they had no problem with a talking dog peeing on Daphne?

Stray Observations:

• The opening sequence reveals that the gang was working for actress Pamela Anderson which could be considered a nod to the celebrity-centric series The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
• The movie tries to land some pothead jokes, alluding to Shaggy and Scooby smoking weed, but the filmmakers didn’t have the balls to fully commit to this fan theory.
• To get aboard the plane Scooby-Doo dresses up as a woman but we later see that another passenger was able to bring her cat with her. Was this a pro-cat anti-dog airline?
• Shaggy and Scooby are depicted here as vegetarian which is a nod to voice actor Casey Kasem’s real-life preference.
• Both Shaggy and Velma get sort of love interests but the film doesn’t do much with either of these subplots.
• Daphne bribes Scooby with a Scooby Snack but being she didn’t expect to see any of the gang on this mystery why did she have Scooby Snacks in her purse?
• Scooby is almost killed while exploring the Spooky Island Castle with Shaggy but if Scooby had died at this point it would have ruined the villain’s plot, which required his ritualistic sacrifice, making this all a case a very bad planning.
• At about the halfway point in the movie Velma inexplicably sports a serious amount of cleavage but then at the end of the film her turtleneck sweater is back.

 

How much fanfic has this version of Velma spawned?

This live-action Scooby-Doo movie is far from the worst entry in the lexicon of Scooby-Doo adventures and they did pretty good in the casting department as you couldn’t find a better choice than Matthew Lillard to play Shaggy – so good that he ended up voicing him for many of the animated shows and movies to follow – and Linda Cardellini’s Velma was pretty spot on as well and the fact that she gets to shine a little more than usual in this outing is a definite plus.  As for Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. they both were fine in their respective parts but maybe it wasn’t the best idea to cast Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Daphne as it brings a little too much baggage to the project. I can understand the filmmakers wanting to turn Daphne into a bit of a badass, something several of the animated movies had already done, but in this movie anytime she went to fight I kept waiting for her to whip out a wooden stake.

 

Could that luchador be a vampire?

On the effects side of things they did a fairly good job of balancing the animated look of the original Scooby-Doo with this CGI version of everyone’s favourite cowardly Great Dane, and for the most part his interactions with the actors worked really well, but what failed in this movie were the demons that chased our heroes around. At no point do they look like anything more than three-dimensional cartoons that look as if the effects team didn't have time to properly finish the rendering.

 

Even with her glasses on I doubt Velma would consider this oversized cartoon scary.

One certainly doesn’t sit down to watch a Scooby-Doo movie for its edgy humour and true scares but with James Gunn on the payroll that is something we certainly could have had if the studio hadn't chickened out and decided to release a film that was aimed at ten-year-olds.  Regardless of all that we still got a somewhat passable live-action Scooby-Doo movie out of this, one that most fans can enjoy, and it did bring Matthew Lillard into Scooby-Doo family and we will always be grateful of that.

 

Fun for even dysfunctional families.

Sword of the Valiant (1984) – Review

Its common knowledge that Cannon films are done on the cheap and as a result most of their output is of a less than notable quality – they basically killed the Superman franchise with their installment – but with Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we get a film that brilliantly utilized beautiful locations across Wales, Ireland and France which gave the film immense production value, sadly, this didn’t stop it from being another one of their low budget disasters.  Despite its star-studded cast and fantastic locals Sword of the Valiant is quite painful at times to watch.

Though based loosely on the poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” the story of Sword of the Valiant barely comes across as an Arthurian tale and aside from the two title characters there isn’t much to connect this movie to popular myths about King Arthur. In fact, King Arthur, Guinevere, the Knights of the Round Table and even Camelot are not even referenced in this movie. The film does take place in a clearly medieval world, we are at first introduced to an angry monarch berating his knights for going soft in these times of peace. “We’ve drowned our knighthood in too much wine,” states the King (Trevor Howard) “Not one drop more, not a morsel of bread until even one of you proves he is worthy of his spurs.” This is the cue for the  Green Knight's (Sean Connery) arrival, who offers the assembled knights a very simple game.  He will calmly standstill while any man is allowed to swing an axe at his neck, but with one small caveat, “Afterwards, if the power is left to me, I have the right to return the blow in like manner.”

 

I must say, medieval party games are damn dark.

None of the knights present have the courage, or stupidity, to take such a challenge so it’s left to a young squire named Gawain (Miles O'Keeffe ) to step up and prove bravery is not foreign in these parts. The King is forced to grant Gawain a knighthood – squires not being allowed to participate in such idiotic games – and Sir Gawain proceeds to lop off the Green Knight’s head, unfortunately, the knight's torso then walks up, grabs the head and puts it back on his body. The Green Knight seems sympathetic to Gawain’s plight, stating, “You shall not die yet, to defend their lack of courage. I came to challenge a man, not a beardless boy.” Gawain is then given a year’s grace to grow a beard, “But when the seasons come full circle we shall meet again and you will pay your debt to me.”

 

Miles O’Keeffe was certainly beardless but far from being a boy.

The Green Knight ever the magnanimous soul he also gives Gawain a chance to solve a riddle to save his life and thus the movie proceeds into quest mode as our hero is next scene toddling off to explore the world with his faithful squire Humphrey (Leigh Lawson) at his side. Right out of the gate we come to the quick realization that this particular Gawain is a right and total prat. Bemoaning his hunger he is told by his squire that when it comes to acquiring food, “Noble knights hunt for it or requisition it.” So what does our noble knight do? He proceeds to try to hunt and kill a fucking unicorn! Thank god he fails, it being magical it just vanishes out of reach, but this is what one expects from a noble hero?  Then these two idiots notice the sudden appearance of a large pavilion and think nothing of entering it and eating the food that magically appears before them.

 

Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.

That this magical construct is the work of the evil sorceress Morgan La Fay (Emma Burdon-Sutton) should be a surprise to no one yet these two dolts take her advice in how to best solve the riddle, which involves them blowing a horn and inadvertently summoning the Black Knight (Douglas Wilmer) and being challenged to a fight to the death. Who knew you couldn’t trust an evil sorceress? Turns out the Black Knight is the guardian of the hidden city of Lyonesse and when Gawain defeats him the dying knight asks to be returned to Lyonesse where he could be properly buried. When these two idiots arrive, after somehow losing Humphrey in some out of nowhere fog, the Black Knight lies about his wounds and calls the victorious Sir Gawain a murderer, setting the city and her guards upon him. Gullible thy name is Gawain.

This adventurous detour does introduce us to the film’s love interest in the form of the beautiful Linet (Cyrielle Clair), a Lady in Waiting who was apparently waiting around for the prophesied arrival of Gawain. She bequeaths a ring of invisibility to Gawain so that he can elude the city’s guards but this just results in dragging things on longer than they needed to be. From this point on the movie is basically Gawain trying to rescue Linet and then failing because he's an idiot, rinse and repeat as necessary to reach an hour and forty-two minutes runtime.

 

The bland and the beautiful.

He tries to rescue her from the Lyonesse guards but she activates the invisibility ring, which somehow now is a ring of teleportation, so he then seeks aid from a great sage (David Rappaport) who magically sends him back to Lyonesse only to discover that the city has turned into a tomb of corpses and that Linet herself is a cobwebbed shrouded crone, but judicious use of the ring and she is restored. Who knew invisibility rings could be so versatile? Sadly, a happily ever after has to be postponed again as not mere minutes after rescuing her she is captured by the lustful Prince Oswald (Ronald Lacey) – Gawain is just shit at his job – and the only reason Linet isn't raped on the spot is that Gaspar (Peter Cushing), the Seneschal of Oswald’s father Baron Fortinbras (John Rhys-Davies) states that it’s up to the Baron to decide who pops her cherry.

 

He basically channels Brian Blessed in this film.

Teamed-up with a bunch of pressganged peasants and an ex-pickpocket turned friar (Brian Coburn) our hero tries to rescue Linet from the Fortinbras castle but fails miserably – he leaves her behind in a room engulfed in flames – yet somehow she survived the inferno and was rescued by a rival baron by the name Sir Bertilak (Bruce Lidington). A despondent Gawain disbands his merry group of morons, without Linet's life is not worth living, but two minutes later he finds himself at Sir Bertilak’s castle where he is reunited with the very much alive Linet. We are then treated to a tedious meeting between Gawain’s men, who have somehow returned to him, and those of the still lustful Prince Oswald. The good guys prevail and Oswald dies at the point of Gawain’s sword, but only in time for the Green Knight to show up and demand that his debt be paid.

 

“A little off the top please?”

Unfortunately, the movie does not end with Gawain being decapitated, instead, it’s revealed that a scarf that Linet had given Gawain was magical and it makes the Green Knight’s axe pass harmless through Gawain's neck. This leads to a brief fight between Gawain and the Green Knight only to have the Green Knight become mortally wounded and whither away like the seasons as Gawain finally understands the nature of the riddle, “Where life is lost, wisdom.” Sure, why not? Then because this film hasn’t done enough to piss off even the hardiest of bad movie viewers we get Sir Gawain returning to Linet where she tells him, "I too live a borrowed year. It began with your act of valour before the Green Knight and now is at an end." And as he touches her on the cheek she turns into a dove and flies away.

 

Seriously, this is the ending you’re going with?

Stray Observations:

• Sean Connery was barely in this film most likely due to him shooting the Bond film Never Say Never Again during the same time period.
• In the original poem Gawain was not a squire but a full-fledged knight when he met the Green Knight.
• The lost city of Lyonesse is part of the Tristan and Iseult story and not that of Sir Gawain.
• Ronald Lacey plays John Rhys-Davies’s son yet Lacey is only nine years younger.
• The actual castles used in this production were fantastic, though they maybe should have removed the lightning rods from the towers during filming.
• It’s clear that not one actor was given more than a ten-second tutorial on swordplay.
• Morgan La Fay makes a too brief appearance in this film only to be turned into a frog by the Green Knight.

 

I guess that’s better than how Sean Connery normally treats women.

To say that Sword of the Valiant was always going to be a bad movie is a fair bet because with Golan and Globus producing failure is as sure as the setting sun, but the level of talented actors on hand here is really quite impressive – Miles O’Keeffe notwithstanding – and the production value on display is equally remarkable, but all that couldn’t stop this film from being an inescapable bog of dreary storytelling. This wasn't even the first time director Stephen Weeks had attempted to adapt the tale of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and he should’ve stopped after the first go-round. Now, I’d normally say that bad movie lovers should skip this one as it’s not really of the “So bad it’s good” variety but to see Sean Connery in the Green Knight outfit is almost worth it.

 

Note: Connery would return to Arthurian mythology as Arthur himself in "First Knight"

Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf (1988) – Review

Continuity has never been Scooby-Doo’s strong suit, with ghosts and monster switching between fake and real depending on the particular run of the show, but Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf hits new lows by completely ignoring the previous film, one that came out the same bloody year! In Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School our heroes were briefly teachers for the daughters of the Universal Monsters, where they even had a rather “affable” relationship with the parents, but in Reluctant Werewolf we have Dracula playing the part of lead antagonist for this group of monsters. Now, I didn’t expect this movie to be a direct sequel but having characters perform complete 180s is a symptom of lazy writing.

There really isn’t much of plot to Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf as this movie is simply a lazy imitation of Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races where in this case instead of Dick Dastardly and Muttley we get Dracula and his monster crew. The basic story here is that fearing he will have to cancel the annual Monster Road Rally, due the Wolfman retiring to Florida, Dracula (Hamilton Camp) consults “The Grimness Book of Records” to discover how to get a new werewolf. According to the book, “Every five hundred years the moon comes into perfect position, on three consecutive nights, to create a new werewolf, and it starts tomorrow night” and to seal the deal the book includes a picture of Shaggy (Casey Kasem) as the next person destined to become a werewolf.

 

If werewolves are so rare what is that hairy monster next to Dracula supposed to be?

Dracula sends twin hunchbacks named “The Hunch Bunch” to ensure that Shaggy becomes a werewolf, which is rather odd considering the prophecy made this seem like a done deal, but regardless of this unnecessary bit of stupidity these bumbling pair of morons are sent to America to retrieve Shaggy but end up bringing along Scooby-Doo and Scrappy (Don Messick) as well as Shaggy’s "Adoring and liberated girlfriend, Googie" (B.J. Ward ), a character who seems madly in love with Shaggy but is never seen again in any further Scooby television shows or movies.

 

Was she intended to be the new Daphne?

Once Dracula’s hunchbacked henchmen captures are heroes and ferries them off to Transylvania the movie’s “plot” is set into gear when Shaggy refuses to participate in the Monster Road Rally but when facing imminent death he makes a deal with Dracula, stating that he'll race under the condition that if he wins Dracula must return him back to his human state and allow him and his friends to leave. What follows is your standard Wacky Races shenanigans with Dracula doing his best to guarantee that Shaggy and Scooby lose the race and with the “help” of fellow racers consisting of Frankenstein's monster, his wife Repulsa, a Mummy, the Witch Sisters, Dragonfly, Dr. Jackyll/Mr. Snyde, Swamp Thing, and Bone Jangles the Skeleton, who cheat constantly throughout the entire race, it would seem unlikely that Shaggy and the gang could possibly win.

 

Spoiler: Shaggy and Scooby-Doo win.

Stray Observations:

• From gym teacher to race car driver Shaggy does seem to have numerous talents, though him being an abject coward makes him being a stock car driver rather out of character as racing is one of the more dangerous sports.
• Apparently in this universe being bitten by a werewolf doesn’t spread the curse, instead, you have to wait every 500 years for a particular moonlit night.
• Why did the Hunch Bunch need to go out of their way to expose Shaggy to moonlight? It’s not as if we don’t see Shaggy out and about at night during this prophesied full moon.
• Even this movie’s writers couldn’t come up with an explanation as to why hiccups would cause Shaggy to instantly switch back and forth between his human and werewolf form.
• Dracula literally has a Bat-Copter and a Bat-Plane, not that this makes him much of a caped crusader.
• This is not the first time Shaggy has been turned into a werewolf as it happened before in the episode "Moonlight Madness" from the second run of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy. Only this time no magic medallion was required.
• Shaggy and Scooby find themselves way out in the lead multiple times despite all the sabotage and setbacks that plague them during the race, maybe Dracula shouldn’t have given them such a good car if he wanted them to lose.

 

I will admit that when Dracula released Genghis Kong I did chuckle a little.

Simply put Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf is a bad movie, not even just as an example of a bad Scooby-Doo movie as it fails on multiple levels – if you thought the lazy puns in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School where bad they've got nothing on this movie – and once again there isn’t a mystery to solve, nor are Fred, Velma or Daphne anywhere to be seen. The only genuine funny character in this entire film was that of Vanna Pira (Pat Musick), a hybrid of Vampira and Wheel of Fortune’s Vanna White, whose idea of good colour commentary during the race consists of her pointing out random colours, “Like, there’s some brown, and there's some grey and there's some green” and sure, that is a pretty silly a joke but it’s also about the only one that landed in this ninety-minute mess. We certainly could have used more Vanna Pira and less of the Hunch Bunch, because if you want to know what could be more annoying than Scrappy-Doo it’d be these guys.

 

Even Flim-Flam would be preferable to these idiots.

The sad thing here is that there was a simple way to make this a better movie, make Dracula one of the good guys. In the previous film it’d already been established that Dracula and the Scooby gang were on friendly terms, with them teaching Dracula’s daughter at the Ghoul School, so with Dracula needing a werewolf to enter in the Monster Road Rally he’d approach Shaggy and Scooby for their help.  What could be easier? As it stands we have a movie where Dracula needs Shaggy for the race, to the point where he Shanghai’s him to Transylvania and blackmails him into competing, but then he proceeds to work against him for the rest of the movie. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Dracula needed them to win the race and that it was some other mysterious villain who was working behind the scenes to see that they failed? A movie where Shaggy becomes a monster is rife with possibilities but the writers The Reluctant Werewolf apparently couldn’t care less.  I’m also not sure what sort of lycanthropy Shaggy suffered from because once he becomes a werewolf he remains one for the rest of the film and doesn’t seem to be affected by the moon anymore.

“Even an idiot who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and Autumn moon is bright.”

Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf is easily one of the worst of the Scooby-Doo animated movies with its collection of lame jokes and sight gags being something that even most five-year-olds would find tired and boring. The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that it also featured the last appearance of Scrappy-Doo, that is until his return in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie.

The Turning (2020) – Review

A modern take on Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw" is certainly an interesting idea, sadly, the makers of this film failed to provide anything interesting to the proceedings. Worse is the fact that the film not only fails to tell a comprehensible story but it's also not all that scary.

The plot of The Turning follows that over the original novella with Kate Mandell (Mackenzie Davis) taking the job as a live-in tutor at Bly Manor after the previous governess Miss Jessel (Denna Thomsen) had supposedly run off – us having witnessed her being attacked while trying to flee the house know this to be untrue – and her young charge is nine-year-old Flora Fairchild (Brooklynn Prince), a precocious child who seems inexplicably terrified about leaving the grounds. Also in the house is the family’s housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Barbara Marten) who will spout such nonsense as “The children are very special Kate. They're thoroughbreds” and finally we have Flora's older brother Miles (Finn Wolfhard) who arrives home after being expelled from his boarding school for trying to strangle a classmate. Unfortunately for Kate, those are just the “living” residents of Bly Manor and soon she is being plagued by visions of Miss Jessel and the family’s former riding instructor Quint (Niall Greig Fulton), and resident sexual predator, who died shortly after Miss Jessel’s disappearance. The movie tries to keep the audience guessing as to what is real and what is not, which was an important element of the novella, but the script for The Turning is interested in nothing more than cheap jump scares.

 

What kind of Yelp rating would you give this place?

Warning Signs That You May Be In a Horror Movie:

• You are staying in a large and spooky house.
• If one or more of the previous staff has died or disappeared.
• The housekeeper is a little off-putting and creepy.
• Outside there is a massive hedge maze.
• There is a child with a tendency towards disturbing drawings.
• The place is littered with creepy dolls or mannequins or both.
• Finn Wolfhard is nearby and seemingly nonplussed by the ghostly events.

 

“Eh, I’ve seen stranger things.”

When watching The Turning it’s clear that director Floria Sigismondi has a lot of talent when it comes to creating a sense of dread and foreboding as the visuals and camerawork are all quite solid, but on the storytelling side of things, she drops the ball big time. A key ingredient to a horror film is getting the audience to sympathize with the protagonist but at no time did I have feelings one way or the other when it came to Kate’s survival as we are given no plausible reason for why she doesn’t bail on this mansion of horror other than her pinky-swear to a nine-year-old girl.

 

I don’t think pinky-swears even hold up in court.

We get all the standard horror clichés that Floria Sigismondi trots out as if on some kind of time table; ghostly images are seen in a mirror, spectral footprints lead our heroine into danger and loud inexplicable noises abound along dark hallways. If the walls dripped blood and a voice boomed “GET OUT” you couldn’t have gotten more clear signs that it’d be best to pack up your shit and go. Now, the film is trying to make the viewer wonder if all these ghostly shenanigans are due to Kate having mental issues, as was the case in the original novella, but this film ladles on so many “It was only a dream” moments that it causes any sensible person to lose interest in our heroine’s plight. That the film comes to an abrupt ending, with no clear answers to anything and anyone who managed to sit through until the end will most likely walk away pissed off.

 

Just don't turn your back on the ghosts.

Updating a hundred-year-old story is going to present some problems, society and social standards have changed a tad over the years, but director Floria Sigismondi doesn’t seem to bother to even try and alter the subject matter in a way that makes sense. A key example of this is the disappearance of the former governess Miss Jessel because in the 21st Century if a young woman suddenly vanished there would be many people asking questions, or are we to believe she had no friend and family to be concerned over her suddenly disappearing? In the 1800s I can see authorities not being too concerned with a missing girl but in the 21st Century, this would not fly. They could have easily included a line of dialogue mentioning an ongoing investigation or had a policeman drop by to ask a question or two, but nope, that would imply the writers knew what they were doing.

 

"Did someone lose the script in the hedge maze, again?"

Of course one of the biggest criticisms that can be levelled at The Turning is that it simply fails at being scary, which is not a good thing for a horror film, but most importantly is the fact that it also failed at making any goddamn sense. A movie doesn’t have to blatantly spell out things for the cheap seats but it also can’t just roll the end credits without coming up with an ending at all. I hope Floria Sigismondi gets another shot at a feature film because she does show some talent behind the camera she just needs to attach her skills to a better script.

Scoob! (2020) – Review

With the release of Scoob! we finally see the Scooby-Doo gang making their big move into computer animation, which is about time considering we’ve already had live-action and even puppet versions of Scooby-Doo, but with this particular outing the writers veered into Scrappy-Doo territory but without actually including Scrappy-Doo, and by that I mean Fred, Daphne and Velma are sidelined for much of the film’s screen time much as they were in the original Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show.

The movie opens with a new origin story of how a young Shaggy met a pup named Scooby-Doo and their first mystery team-up with fellow trick or treaters Fred, Daphne and Velma as they bust a crook using a supposed haunted house to hide his ill-gotten gains, but once our introduction to our crime-busting gang is over with the film jumps to present day where Fred (Zac Efron) informs the gang that they’ve got to put Mystery Inc. on a more professional footing if they hope to make enough money to repair the Mystery Machine. Enter Simon Cowell, who explains to the group that if he is to consider investing money into Mystery Inc. they need to be a better group and that means losing the deadwood. He states that Fred is the muscle, Daphne (Amanda Seyfried) is the people person, and Velma (Gina Rodriguez) has the smarts and the technical savvy, while Shaggy (Will Forte) and Scooby (Frank Welker) are the Weakest Links.

Note: None of the group stand up to mention that Shaggy and Scooby have been integral in the capturing of most of the crooks they’ve encountered, even if only as incompetent bait.

It’s this division in the ranks that propels the story forward as our dejected duo soon find themselves being targeted for collection by Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs), who’s on the hunt for three giant dog skulls that will allow him to access a fortune in gold located in the underworld. Turns out the legendary Alexander the Great hid his vast treasure within the Greek Underworld, as one would tend to do, but to “safely” open a doorway a direct descendant of Peritas, Alexander the Great's dog is needed.

 

Guess what certain Great Dane fills the bill?

Even as Scooby-Doo plotlines go this one is a tad convoluted, not only does it bring up all this bizarre mythology it also throws in a backstory as to how Dick Dastardly lost his faithful dog Muttley in his first attempt at getting the treasure – in a scene reminiscent of Stargate –  but we also have a whole subplot with the Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg) and Dynomutt (Ken Jeong), where we learn that this isn’t the original Blue Falcon but rather his incompetent son, who is an egocentric buffoon with confidence issues stemming from not being as good as his dad.

 

“Is there anybody here without serious relationship issues?”

With all our characters finally introduced and established, including Blue Falcon’s version of Luscious Fox in the form of Dee Dee Sykes (Kiersey Clemons), who pilots the ship and is mostly in charge of exposition, the mystery is finally ready to get underway, unfortunately, there isn’t much of a mystery to be solved. Scoob! is more of a “treasure hunt” movie, with different teams running around trying to acquire a particular MacGuffin, rather your standard Scooby-Doo mystery.

 

Think National Treasure but with a talking dog.

And speaking of teams what is the rest of Mystery Inc. doing while Shaggy and Scooby are flying around with the Blue Falcon?  We do check in on Fred, Daphne and Velma occasionally, as they try and track down the “abducted” Shaggy and Scooby, but they don’t have much effect on the plot other than to hammer in the idea that “friendship is important” during the film’s climax and stating that Shaggy and Scooby are, “The heart of Mystery Inc.”

 

"At least we aren’t upstaged by Scrappy-Doo this time out."

Stray Observations:

• The title sequence is a nice homage to the opening of the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
• In their “ghostly” encounter at the Rigby House for the first time in Scooby-Doo history the rigging for the fake ghost is quickly spotted by our heroes.
• Apparently, dog kennel registries keep track of lineages of their dogs going as far back as ancient Macedonia. Who knew?
• The three mystical skulls Dastardly needs for his evil plan is a complete lift from the 1996 comic book movie The Phantom.
• The bowling alley where Shaggy and Scooby are attacked is named Takamoto Bowl, after Scooby-Doo's original designer Iwao Takamoto.
• The third skull is located below Messick Mountain, a nice nod to original Scooby-Doo voice actor Don Messick.
• In the original Dynomutt Show it was Dynomutt who was the clumsy comic relief but in this incarnation, it’s Blue Falcon’s son who is the goofball.  Is this another case of subverting expectations?
• We get plenty of references to other Hanna-Barbera animated properties such as Peebles Pet Store from The Magilla Gorilla Show, Dick Dastardly is obviously from Wacky Races, Velma's laptop was from Quest Labs, and posters for Hong Kong Phooey and the Hex Girls can be spotted in the Funland Amusement Park.  These are all pretty fun items for fans to find but there was one painful reference that set my teeth on edge.

 

I'm sorry, but this is not my Captain Caveman.

If you’ve been longing to see a return of Captain Caveman this movie may spark some joy but Tracy Morgan was so horribly miscast in the part that I’m thinking more horror than joy will be sparked here, and his signature scream of "Captain Caveman!" is another hollow reference by writers who don't seem to understand the source material.

Director Tony Cervone keeps things pretty lively throughout the films ninety-plus minute running time, with wacky hijinks and shenanigans for the cast of characters to bounce through, but I never once felt like I was watching a Scooby-Doo movie but more a parody of the superhero genre, and part of that stems from the fact that Mark Walhberg’s Blue Falcon looked to be trying very hard to be Will Arnett’s Lego Batman but without the charm or humour. Overall, the writing was fairly uninspired with the nostalgia factor being the only tool the filmmakers had in their belt – references to other cartoons will only get you so far – and without the team dynamic that fans of Scooby-Doo have grown to love all the speeches about heart and friendship will fall rather flat.

 

“It says here that a cliché will bring this movie to a frightful conclusion.”

On the voice casting side of things, it’s really a shame that only Frank Welker was asked to return as Matthew Lillard’s, who has voiced Shaggy in most incarnations ever since he took the role back in 2002, is greatly missed here as Will Forte sounds nothing like Shaggy, and Zac Efron is so blandly boring as Fred Jones that he’s almost instantly forgettable. Amanda Seyfried and Gina Rodriguez do better as Daphne and Velma but as they are not given all that much to do storywise one must ask why such talented actors were wasted on such thankless parts? The only actor to come out of this thing fairly unscathed is Jason Isaacs as Dick Dastardly, he perfectly captured the nefarious cartoon villain, which brings us back to the problem of plotting. We are given the ridiculous premise of Scooby being needed to open a doorway to the underworld and then the film simply bounces us from one location to the next for the sole purpose of setting up a series of random weak jokes.

 

"I deserve a better movie!"

On the plus side, the computer animation this film had to offer is at times quite spectacular and re-imagined classic characters are brought wonderfully to life, I just wish they’d married this artwork with a better story. Scoob! is nowhere near the worst of the Scooby-Doo movies but as a film that was supposed to be theatrical released it’s quite disappointing as all the cool visuals in the world can’t hide lazy writing.

Note: The opening title sequence, the one that paid homage to the original show where the gang solved actual mysteries, was an odd thing to include in a film that has no mystery.

Camelot (1967) – Review

The most surprising thing about Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical Camelot is that it’s really the only musical based on the Arthurian tales we’ve got – that is if you discount Bing Crosby’s A Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur’s Court and the horrible animated film Quest for Camelot – which is odd considering that the epic pageantry of those legends seems like perfect settings for broad musical numbers. Based on T. H. White's The Once and Future King the musical Camelot focuses most of its three-hour running time on the romantic entanglements of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot instead of the epic adventures of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, this was probably not the best idea.

The film has an interesting structure as it begins with King Arthur (Richard Harris) preparing for battle against his long-time friend Lancelot Du Lac (Franco Nero) but when the movie eventually reaches conclusion we don't get to see that battle, the film ends with Arthur stating, “I have won my battle, here is my victory. What we did here will be remembered, you’ll see.” One has to admit that it is a unique storytelling angle, if not completely satisfying, but we also have the three hours of movie that takes between those two moments. So there's that.  It’s while waiting for this particular battle to begin that we find Arthur reflecting on the sad circumstances which had led him to this situation and he asks his childhood mentor, Merlyn (Laurence Naismith), for advice, but as Merlyn has been missing for years – something to do with living backwards through time – his advice is simply, “Think back.” This leads us into the film’s more structured narrative as we get Arthur "looking back" at his first meeting and then betrothal of Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave) and the decision to form the Round Table under the ideals of “Might serves right, not might makes right.” This leads to Lancelot arriving in England to join Arthur in this noble venture.

 

“The kingdom is alive with the sound of music.”

As musicals go, I’ve sat through worse, but none of the songs of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe really resonated with me – there are a dozen songs and some seem to go on for an interminable length of time – and Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave aren’t terrible singers though they both tend to utilize the “Speaking Singing” technique that Rex Harrison developed for My Fair Lady. The songs' present intent to support the story, giving us emotional insights into the characters and their goals, but as the age-old love triangle is nothing new I found myself thinking “Get on with it!” during some of the numbers.

 

"Is this a wedding or a candlelit vigil?"

Stray Thoughts:

• I would have loved to have seen this movie with the original stage cast, Julie Andrews as Guinevere and Richard Burton as Arthur.  Sadly, both actors declined to participate.
• The character of Morgan le Fay was featured in the Broadway version but in this movie adaptation she has sadly been excised.
• Arthur has his message of collecting knights for a “Round Table” delivered all over the kingdom, but why such parchment is wasted on all the commoners is beyond me. It’s not like a peasant is going to get a seat at the table so why hand them invitations?
• King Arthur has a “Meet Cute” with both Guinevere and Lancelot.
• The character of King Pellinore, as portrayed by Lionel Jeffries, bears a remarkable resemblance to the White Knight from Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass.
• Merlin does make an appearance in this movie but he’s treated mostly as an extended cameo.

 

“Have you seen my owl, he's quite lovely."

One could almost consider Camelot to be a sequel to the Disney animated film The Sword in the Stone as both films are based on T. H. White's The Once and Future King but where the Disney film dealt with Arthur as a young boy, ending with him pulling the sword from the stone, this film foregoes all this and begins years later with Arthur forming the Round Table, while stories of pulling Excalibur free and being taught by Merlin we only hear about in passing.

Aside from the drama of the ill-fated romance between Lancelot and Guinevere we also have the arrival of Arthur’s bastard son Mordred (David Hemmings), who is allowed to join the Knights of the Round Table for fairly contrived reasons, and he spends most of his brief screen time fermenting rebellion amongst the knights, which is not at all that helpful to the narrative as he doesn’t arrive until about the two-hour mark.

 

“I’m sorry, was that my cue?”

When the movie finally ended I was left asking, "Where’s the search for the Holy Grail, what about the Green Knight or Morgan le Fay?" Sadly, I was left with no satisfactory answers.  I'm sure fans of Camelot will point out the ornate sets and the visually beautiful staging of such a lavish production that makes this a classic, and you will get no argument from me there as the sets and locations looked damn impressive, but at a three-hour runtime, it needed more to hold itself together other than a tepid romance between two beautiful people and Richard Harris.

Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (1988) – Review

When it comes to the idea of employment the Scooby-Doo franchise has been rather loose with how our cast of characters earns gas money. Shaggy and Scooby weren’t selling pot on the side to pay for all those immense Submarine Sandwiches - despite this being a fair assumption - they were often seen to have gainful employment, from working at the Fearless Detective Agency for Shaggy’s Uncle Fearless during the run of the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo show or they'd join Daphne as intrepid reporters for Peep-Hole Magazine, but it was in this 1988 movie that we find Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy-Doo taking on one of their most dangerous jobs yet.

In Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School Shaggy (Casey Kasem), Scooby and Scrappy-Doo (Don Messick) take a job as gym teachers at a finishing school - the fact that any educational institution would hire a beatnik and two dogs as teachers should have been a red flag to our trio - but this particular 80s animated Scooby-Doo movie is another entry that lacks any real mystery with this movie having more in common with such Hanna-Barbera shows like Wacky Racers than with the classic Scooby-Doo mysteries. The basic premise of this movie is that our trio of nitwits has been hired by Ms. Grimwood (Glynis Johns) as gym teachers to train the girl-ghouls in volleyball so that they can finally defeat the Calloway Military School For Boys located next door.  Sure, that sounds reasonable.

Note: It’s rather odd to see a sports rivalry movie where one team consists of girls and the other of boys, was Scooby-Doo trying to be gender progressive here?

Needless to say, both Shaggy and Scooby are shocked to learn that their pupils are the offspring of famous monsters as the student body consists of Sibella (Susan Blu), the daughter of Count Dracula, Elsa Frankenteen (Pat Musick), the daughter of Frankenstein's monster, Winnie (Marilyn Schreffler), daughter of the Wolfman, Phantasma (Russi Taylor) the ghostly daughter of a phantom, and finally, we have Tanis (Patty Maloney) the daughter of the Mummy.  Now, despite the abject terror of their monstrous charges Shaggy had signed a contract, which had been witnessed by Scooby and Scrappy, so there was nothing they could do but settle in and do their best at prepping these girls for the big game.

 

Apparently Shaggy and Scooby were more afraid of lawsuits than they were of monsters.

The key problem with Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School is that to make this a feature-length movie the producers felt it necessary to cram two completely separate story elements together to make one full movie. The first half of the film focuses on Shaggy getting the girls in shape for their annual volleyball game, with meal breaks that sadly consisted mostly of rotted food, and then the big game itself.  It's here where we get the Ghoul School using their monstrous abilities to win the game despite the boys from Calloway Military School attempting to cheat by using jetpacks and a remote-controlled volleyball.

 

Question: Can it be considered cheating if your opponents have inherent magical abilities?

Now, the competition between the Ghoul School for Girls and Calloway Military School is only the first half of the movie because once the girls win the game the story shift focus to a plot to take over the world by the evil witch Revolta (Ruta Lee), who wants to capture and enslave the girls because she believes their parents have gone soft. That's cartoon logic for you.  She is aided by what looks to be a tentacled pickle called The Grim Creeper (Andre Stojka), who is your standard cartoon evil minion and by that I mean goofy and incompetent.

 

Do these two look like an actual threat to the world?

Stray Observations:

• Though labelled a Finishing School for Ghouls none of the pupils are actually ghouls, a ghoul is a humanoid creature that is associated with lurking around graveyards and consuming human flesh and none of the girls qualify for that category.
• I’m not exactly sure how undead creatures like Dracula and The Mummy or popping out children.
• This movie also ignores the fact that Shaggy and Scooby had already met Dracula back in “Who’s Minding the Monster” from The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show.
• Elsa Frankensteen is an obvious reference to Elsa Lanchester who played The Bride of Frankenstein.
• Shaggy is hired to help the Ghoul School win their annual volleyball game against the Military school but at no time does he ever give them a volleyball lesson.
• Strange that when there is an open house at the school only the ghoul girl’s fathers attend, does this cartoon follow the Disney rule of having at least one dead parent?
• Despite competing with them in annual volleyball championships Colonel Calloway somehow remained unaware that the All Ghoul-School was a school for monsters.

 

Dude, it's right in the name.

Neither the volleyball competition nor the evil plot being hatched by the witch rises above mildly interesting and they clearly belonged in separate movies, yet an entertaining movie was still possible if any of comic hijinks or jokes had landed, sadly none do. So, if you are a fan of lazy-ass puns and tired slapstick then you may find some enjoyment out of watching Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School but I can’t recommend this to anyone over the age of seven
.

Question: Could this movie have been a precursor to Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania?