Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins (2009) – Review

With Warner Bros. losing faith in the live-action Scooby-Doo films as a theatrical property, a team-up with the Cartoon Network to make lower budgeted live-action versions seemed like an almost natural next step, but instead of going with a continuation of the Scooby gang’s adventures following Scooby-Doo 2: Monster Unleashed, we got a prequel that would show how the gang all met up for the first time.

This movie begins with your standard teen-comedy introductions. In the case of Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, this means our cast of characters would meet aboard the Coolsville High School bus, where Shaggy (Nick Palatas) is tripped by your typical cliché school bully, one who just happens to be friends with Fred (Robbie Amell) and though Fred doesn’t approve of such behaviour, he doesn’t go out of his way to stop it either. Also, on board the bus is Velma (Hayley Kiyoko) the school’s resident science nerd and the beautiful Daphne (Kate Melton), who is a wealthy member of the school’s Drama Club.

 

“Have you signed the Save Ferris Bueller petition yet?”

We later find Shaggy having trouble with his locker, which somehow results in him falling headfirst into a trashcan and rolling into the principal’s office, but while there, Principal Deedle (Shawn Macdonald) gives Shaggy some advice about making friends and stamp collecting. Now, if you think a character blurting out such a non-sequitur as stamp collecting is a little weird, you’re not alone and are probably well on your way to solving this mystery.

But what is the mystery that begins this little adventure? Well, we eventually get introduced to everyone’s favourite talking Great Dane Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) whose been having a little trouble getting adopted (him being big and excitable are apparently bad pet attributes), and this leads to him getting lost and finding himself in the Coolsville Cemetery at night, and before you can say “Jinkies,” a pair of ghosts rise out of the ground.

 

So, we’re going real ghosts here, not dudes in masks? Check.

After a terrified Scooby-Doo finds his way into Shaggy’s basement bedroom, where he is quickly adopted without anyone in the family being at all concerned where this large stray dog came from, the mystery finally gets underway. After another scuffle on the school bus causes the distracted driver to crash said bus into a nearby pole (which then smashes Vice Principal Grimes’ (Garry Chalk) new car’s windshield), Shaggy, Velma, Daphne and Fred are all sentenced to detention in the school library, while Scooby remains tethered outside.

 

Insert Breakfast Club joke here.

At this point, our ghosts make a second appearance as they swoop into the library to terrify our heroes before continuing their spectral flight to the school’s gym where a pep rally is in progress. A third mysterious figure appears, cloaked in black and wearing what is clearly a theatre mask, and he announces, “Students of Coolsville High, leave this place now or pay for all eternity.” Not only does this cause a mass exodus of the school, but it also results in Vice Principal Grimes blaming the Scooby gang for creating the hoax, so he upgrades their detention to a suspension. With no alternative but to clear their names by solving this mystery, our heroes band together to hunt down clues and expose the villainous masked spectre.

 

Who could this mysterious third ghost be?

I’ll give Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins credit for trying to give us a classic Scooby-Doo mystery, but unfortunately, it’s not a very good one, as the guilty party is fairly obvious from the outset and all the red-herrings and alternate suspects weren’t going to fool anyone. Now, just who are the suspects? First, we have the school janitor Otis (C. Ernst Harth), who hates his job and would rather be a dancer, and then we have the school’s librarian (Lorena Gale) who is angry about her budget being slashed and having to deal with illiterate students, and finally, we have Vice Principal Grimes who the gang discovered had recently checked out the book “A Practical Guide to Raising the Dead and How to Use them For Your Own Evil Purposes,” and they find this piece of incriminating evidence in the man’s own home.

 

I must say, that is a strange book to be offered by a High School library.

Well, that looks to be the nail in the coffin of Grimes’ guilt, but no sooner does the Scooby gang find themselves captured by the Masked Spectre then it is revealed that Grimes is also a prisoner of this nefarious spook. Turns out, the man behind the mask is none other than Principal Deedle who raised the ghosts of Prudence Prufrock (Leah James) and Ezekial Gallows (Brian J. Sutton )  so as to scare people away so he’d be free to look for a lost time capsule that contained a rare stamp. I’m sure there are dumber Scooby-Doo plots out there, but this one has to be near the top.

Note: At one point, towards the end of the movie, Shaggy accidentally reads the wrong spell from the book, which releases all the ghosts from Coolsville Cemetery, but he has no control over them as Deedle did nor does this onslaught of ghastly ghosts have any bearing on the mystery’s conclusion.

Stray Observations:

• This prequel ignores the series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo where the gang was shown to have met as children.
• While in detention, Velma complains that Fred only apologized to Daphne: “I just find it interesting that you apologized to the pretty girl and not to the girl whose science project you destroyed.” Now, for this bit to have worked, the studio needed to have hired someone other than Hayley Kiyoko who is very attractive. Hell, the film doesn’t even bother to try and hide how cute she is.
• Hayley Kiyoko would later go on to voice Velma for many of the Scooby-Doo cartoons and animated movies.
• The Vice Principle suspends the Scooby gang from school believing they are behind the ghostly antics plaguing Coolsville High, but the ability of high school kids to pull off such an elaborate visual effects hoax is pretty farfetched.
• Our heroes are somehow suspended without the school notifying their parents of said punishment.
• In this incarnation of Scooby-Doo, the Mystery Machine now belongs to Daphne, but Shaggy is the only one with a license to drive as he’s the oldest due to being held back a couple of years.
• Vice Principle Grimes has WWII model airplanes that can not only fly but have functioning guns. Neat, but a little odd.
• Why would the villain need the Scooby gang to recover the time capsule when his two enslaved ghosts have been shown to be quite capable of possessing mannequins and moving objects?
• We learn in this movie that Shaggy came up with the recipe for Scooby Snacks, but if that were the case, how can he and Scooby be bribed with them? Couldn’t Shaggy just make more?
• This movie continues the live-action trend of giving Velma a make-over.

 

What a surprise, who would have guessed that without her glasses she’d be hot?

It’s clear that Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins didn’t have the budget of the two theatrically released Scooby-Doo movies — the CGI for Scooby is even more cartoonish this time out — but it’s kind of odd that they’d go with a combination of real ghosts as well as a dude in a mask for this prequel, as they’d already done that shtick in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. What is more of a shame is that the mystery itself is badly written. The janitor and librarian are incredibly thin as far as suspects go, but then the film doubles down on its cheating by then having the gang discover that Grimes had checked out the ghost raising book, which begs the question, why did Grimes check out that book? Did Principal Deedle check the book out under Grimes’ name and then place it in his home to frame him? Nope, because framing someone was never really part of his plan and leaving such a powerful book lying around for someone else to discover is rather stupid.

 

I guess stamp collectors do not make for good masked villains.

On the plus side of things, I found this new cast of actors did a fine job bringing the Scooby gang to life, with Nick Palatas giving Matthew Lillard a run for his money in the Shaggy impression department, but a lazy script and a lopsided mystery sank this feature beyond salvaging, making Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins a prequel we truly didn’t need.

First Knight (1995) – Review

In this 90s big budget Arthurian epic Hollywood decided to give Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur a rest – it being the basis for such Arthurian classics as John Boorman’s Excalibur – and instead embraced the romances written by French poet Chrétien de Troyes, who actually invented the character of Lancelot. This version of the King Arthur legend also continues the annoying tradition of leaving magic out of the story, something I’ve never quite understood.

Our film opens with a text crawl explaining to the audience that, “At long last, the wars were over. The great king of Camelot had devoted his life to building a land of peace and justice. Now he wished to marry.” So, right off the top were left wondering if this is a sequel to a more exciting and possibly better movie. Who wants to watch a movie about royal senior citizen settling down to some peace and quiet? Lucky for us the crawl continues, “But the peace was not to last. The most powerful of Arthur’s knights, Prince Malagant, had long been jealous of the King’s glory. Now he found cause to quarrel with Arthur and left Camelot with hatred in his heart.” And exactly what caused Malagant to quarrel with the King? We never do find out why but I'd like to think it was because Arthur was one of those guys who double-dipped his potato chips.

 

“I will not follow a king with a poor party etiquette.”

The nasty Malagant (Ben Cross) has been making a nuisance of himself by burning down villages in Lyonesse, a small country ruled by Guinevere (Julia Ormond), which leads to her to going forward with an arranged marriage to King Arthur (Sean Connery), a marriage that is partly out of admiration for the king and partly for security against Malagant but also because she does love Arthur despite their 35-year age difference. While on route to Camelot Guinevere's carriage is ambushed by a group of Malagant’s soldiers, lucky for her a vagabond and skilled swordsman named Lancelot (Richard Gere) just so happened to be in the neighbourhood and he thwarts Malagant’s plan to kidnap her. After saving her from what was quickly escalating into an attempted rape Lancelot proceeds to hit on Guinevere because nothing sparks romance like sexual assault. Guinevere rightly slaps this asshole but his response to being slapped is to then forcibly kiss the woman in question and state, “I can tell when a woman wants me.”

 

An Officer and a Gentleman he is not.

After saving Guinevere a second time, when Malagant’s men kidnap her right from under Arthur’s nose, Lancelot is offered a knighthood and a seat at the Round Table but the only reason he takes the position is so that he can hang around Camelot and perv on Guinevere some more, which is this film's idea of a chivalrous hero for some reason. Then after a victorious battle against Malagant’s forces, Lancelot finally decides mooning after another man’s wife is probably not such a great idea and tells Guinevere he is leaving, which she then responds to with a tearful kiss. This tender moment is, of course, interrupted by Arthur and thus this version of the Arthurian myth, and the love triangle that would destroy a kingdom is ended over something as lame as a goodbye kiss. I’ve watched Hallmark Channel movies with more interesting love stories than what is on display here.

 

“Why has this script forsaken me?”

Stray Thoughts:

• Guinevere is normally portrayed as the daughter of King Leodegrance, who was the king of Cameliard, not Lyonesse. In fact, Lyonesse is the Arthurian country most associated with the story of Tristan and Iseult.
• We are first introduced to Lancelot as he challenges local peasants to some swordplay for fun and profit, but was it common for the average 6th Century peasants to have swords of their own?
• An automated gauntlet is set-up as some kind of pre-wedding festive game but padded suits or not the swing axes and swords would kill any contestant hit by them. Did these people consider maiming a good omen for a wedding?
• When King Arthur finally leads his men out into the field against Malagant he brings Guinevere along for no logical reason. I know she’s supposed to be this brave and strong woman but you don’t bloody well bring your queen into combat situations.
• Arthur has his men set up a fake encampment, full of empty tents and dummies to look like soldiers so as to trap Malagant’s forces. I guess this King Arthur was a fan of Blazing Saddles.
• Apparently, during a public trial all guards manning the castle walls and gates are given the day off because that is the only way to explain Malagant and his army sneaking into Camelot, in broad fucking daylight, and no one noticing.
• We get none of the magical elements of the Arthurian legend, with no Excalibur or Merlin in sight, but we do get a Camelot that looks like a Disney theme park.

 

Camelot, the dullest place on Earth.

The removal of the mythical magical elements of the Arthurian legend has always befuddled me.  Do movie execs think a more grounded version of a classic myth would be more palatable to modern audiences? If they wanted to make a simple medieval romance all they had to do was stop name-checking characters from the Arthurian myth because aside from the famous love triangle there is nothing that ties this particular story to Camelot, clearly, director Jerry Zucker and the folks over at Columbia Pictures wanted that name recognition so we’re stuck with a tepid bastardization version instead. But as bad an adaptation of the Arthurian myth First Knight is the worse aspect of this film is easily in the casting.

 

A tale as old as time as well as being as old as Sean Connery.

The nonsensical changes to the Arthurian legend pale in comparison to the complete lack of chemistry between the film’s leads. Hollywood making King Arthur and Guinevere into some sort of May-December romance is nothing new – most notably in the 1953 epic Sword of Lancelot – but Sean Connery and Julia Ormond not only had to deal with a 35-year age gap but also the fact that they have zero chemistry on screen, and all of their scenes together are painfully dull to watch. Yet their complete lack of spark pales in comparison to the absolute zero levels of charisma that Richard Gere brings to the show. Lancelot is supposed to be King Arthur’s best friend and greatest champion but the version portrayed by Gere is that of a complete cad and a bounder. He’s just some bum travelling the countryside making money off the peasant folk, that is when he’s not hitting on women that are betrothed to someone else. In the legend Lancelot du Luc was a French knight who joined King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table while in this movie he's certainly not French – thank god they didn't try and make Richard Gere fake a French accent – and though Gere is a fine actor it's safe to say that period piece movies are not his thing as he was never once convincing as a 6th-century resident.

 

I wonder what hair salon Lancelot uses.

The real crime here is that at two hours and fifteen minutes this movie feels three times as long, it’s just that boring. The battle scenes are barely interesting, the hero is about as likable as foot fungus and Sean Connery was clearly in paycheck mode throughout the film’s interminable running time. What’s interesting is that this isn’t even Sean Connery’s first foray into the Arthurian myth as he played the Green Knight in 1984’s Sword of the Valiant, and though that movie is a much worse entry than First Knight it still managed to be more entertaining.

Words like lukewarm, boring and tedious are not what one would normally associate with the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table but somehow Jerry Zucker managed to give us a bloated period piece with all the fun and excitement of those classic tales painfully excised.

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004) – Review

With the first live-action Scooby-Doo movie pulling in $275 million worldwide a sequel was never in doubt and with director Raja Gosnell, screenwriter James Gunn and the rest of the cast back one could have expected more of the same this time out, sadly, this was a little too true as we don't find much in the way of improvements as this live-action installment still misses the mark more often than not.

In this movie, we find the members of Mystery Inc. being hailed as local heroes of their hometown of Coolsville with the grand opening of the Coolsonian Criminology Museum which commemorates their past solved cases with various monster costumes on display. The night does not go quite as planned as an evil masked figure appears and uses the reanimated Pterodactyl Ghost costume to steal two more of the exhibit’s costumes. This Doctor Doom knock-off crossed with the Phantom of the Opera announces to the Scooby gang that, “This time you will be the ones unmasked, as the buffoons you truly are,” and with Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby-Doo’s (Neil Fanning) incompetence leading to much of the museum’s exhibit being trashed things aren’t looking good for our heroes.

 

"I'll get you, my pretty, and your little CGI dog too!"

Local investigative reporter Heather Jasper Howe (Alicia Silverstone) immediately starts a smear campaign to discredit Mystery Incorporated, stating, “It's my job to unmask those who pretend to be who they're not.” Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is quick to point out that her agenda seems to align perfectly with what the Evil-Masked-Guy was stating, which moves Heather to the top of the suspect list, but then the Evil-Masked-Guy appears standing on the roof of the Coolsville museum and we all know a villain can’t be in two places at the same time.

 

Spoiler Alert: She is totally the villain behind the monsters being unleashed.

In the previous live-action movie there wasn’t much of an actual mystery for the Scooby gang to solve, it just had the “surprise” reveal that Scrappy-Doo was behind everything, but in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed writer James Gunn at least pretends there is an interest in giving us a good Scooby-Doo mystery. Unfortunately, most of the film’s running time is spent dealing with each of the gang’s existential crises, we have Daphne wondering if she is just a “pretty face” with nothing else to offer despite the fact that in the last movie she had already shown us she was a badass fighter and in this one she takes on the Ghost of the Black Knight and is able to figure out how to get the gang out of a locked cage by using the contents of her purse. It’s as if the film wants us to ignore the evidence before our own eyes to justify character development that had already been established.

Trivia Note: The Black Knight Ghost appeared in the very first episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in the episode titled “What a Night for a Knight.”

Daphne isn’t the only one having a personal crisis as we have Shaggy and Scooby-Doo coming to the startling realization that through their entire career as members of Mystery Incorporated they’ve been a couple of screw-ups – which means they aren’t only idiots but rather obtuse ones – and leads them to decide to solve the mystery on their won, and then we have Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) who is losing his confidence as a team leader even to point where he considers himself to be a wimp, and finally we have Velma (Linda Cardellini) trying to change herself into more "glamorous, mysterious, adventurous jet-setter hot babe" in an attempt to try and get museum curator Patrick Wisely (Seth Green) to like her.

 

They do make an adorable couple.

Now, even though it’s clear to even most five-year-old viewers that Heather is the true villain of this piece we still have to introduce a few more suspects. Now, the first costume to come to life was that of Pterodactyl Ghost who was originally unmasked by the Scooby gang as that of mad scientist Jonathan Jacobo (Tim Blake Nelson), who was stealing money to further his research into creating real monsters, but as he had died years ago while trying to escape prison he gets removed from the suspect list…well, his body was never found so maybe keep him on the list. Then we have Jeremiah Wickles (Peter Boyle), the original Black Knight Ghost's portrayer and who just so happened to have been Jacobo’s cellmate and just newly released from prison, and finally, we have Velma’s love interest Patrick, whose personality seems a little unstable and is revealed to have a secret shine to Jonathon Jacobo. Why Patrick Wisely has a shrine to Jacobo or why it would be located under the lair of the Evil-Masked Guy is never explained, but this movie doesn’t really have time to make sense, they have a mystery to solve. And just who is the culprit hell-bent on destroying the Scooby gang?

 

The Evil-Masked-Guy is…Jonathan Jacobo, the original Pterodactyl Ghost.

Wait…what? That’s right folks, the guilty party is none other than a character we were told was dead earlier in the film - but didn’t I state earlier in this review that Heather Howe was this movie’s villain, so how could it be Jacobo? Well, this movie uses the double unmasking joke that has been used a half-a-dozen times throughout Scooby's history. The Evil-Masked-Guy is first exposed to be Heather but then a second mask is pulled off to reveal that Dr. Jonathan Jacobo and Heather Howe are one and the same person and that her cameraman Ned (Zahf Paroo), who we were barely introduced to had but had time to don the Evil-Masked-Guy costume to appear on the roof of the museum to give Heather a perfect alibi.  Jacobo would have been better off investing his technology into possible military applications rather than obsessing over a bunch of kids and their dumb dog.

Note: Jacobo’s ability to create real ghosts and yet still be just a guy in a mask makes him a unique villain.

Stray Observations:

• Mystery Incorporated is seen to have a tricked out crime-solving headquarters but we’ve still never seen them get paid for solving a crime. Is this whole thing being funded by Daphne’s rich family?
• Velma being afraid of dating is a character trait that comes out of the blue in this movie, even in the previous live-action film Velma had no problem talking to guys.
• Scooby and Shaggy sing Frank Sinatra’s "Strangers in the Night” a song that features the improvised scat lyrics, "Scoo-bee-doo-bee-doo" which was the original inspiration of Scooby-Doo’s name.
• The “Faux Ghost” bar is a hangout for Mystery Inc.’s unmasked villains which could be a nod to “Noonan’s Bar” in Gotham City where many of Batman’s villains hang out.
• This being a Raja Gosnell movie we are, of course, subjected to a terrible musical number.
• Daphne trying to karate kick the 10,000 Volt Ghost has to be one the dumbest of moments in this movie, there is being a badass and then there’s being a jackass.
• The idea of a hot Velma briefly seen in the previous movie is amped up in this installment.

 

“Jinkies!”

The biggest problem I had with Scooby-Doo2: Monsters Unleashed was the complete unnecessary moments of an identity crisis amongst the Scooby gang, in the last film we already had the drama of them breaking up and having to discover how to be a team again so we certainly didn’t need more character strife as depicted here.  The first live-action movie could be considered a light-hearted parody of the Scooby-Doo cartoons – a bit too light-hearted and where the dream of an R-Rated Scooby-Doo movie died – but it at least tried to poke a little fun at the tropes of the original cartoon while this movie was more of a case of “Remember that episode?” without much else going on, relying heavily on the nostalgia of the original cartoon instead of trying something new.

 

We do get an occasional cool moment, but that's about it.

The returning cast all do fine and with no earthshattering performances but the film gets major points taken away for completely wasting Tim Blake Nelson. Why even cast such a great actor if you're only going to give him one bloody line of dialogue?  There was to be a sequel to Scooby-Doo2: Monsters Unleashed, with James Gunn on board to write and direct, but the box office returns were not good enough to greenlight a third film and thus the subsequent live-action endeavours have all been made-for-television.

Note: I will admit that it was nice seeing several of the classic Scooby-Doo ghosts being brought to life but the special effects on display to bring them to life were not all that impressive.

Hero at Large (1980) – Review

Who wouldn’t want to meet a superhero in real life, many of us grew up pouring over countless Marvel or DC comic books hoping to if not be bitten by a radioactive spider at least hoped to someday meet one of those larger than life heroes for ourselves and Martin Davidson’s film Hero A Large wonderfully taps into the hopeful childhood spark that often fades away over time. So, how was all this made possible? Well, the trick was in casting John Ritter, one of the most likable men to ever grace this planet.

With the character of Steve Nichols (John Ritter) we get the standard struggling New York City actor that we’ve seen dozens of times before but in the case of Nichols, his bitterness of being stuck literally spear-carrying during Shakespeare in the Park is trumped by his bubbling enthusiasm for his chosen profession. Lack of jobs in his chosen profession causes him to be late on his rent but it doesn’t stop him from hitting on the beautiful new neighbour across the hall, Jolene Walsh (Anne Archer), or giving it his all when posing as comic-book hero “Captain Avenger” for a movie he's hired to help promote. It’s this job of dressing up as Captain Avenger that gets our movie in motion with his stopping off at a local mom and pop variety store to get some milk and foiling a robbery while still in costume.

 

“Mind if I drop in?”

This a moment of pure wish fulfilment, being at the right place at the right time and becoming a hero, but when the people of New York jumped on the Captain Avenger bandwagon Nichols doesn’t realize it’s better to quit when your ahead. While driving relief cab he listens to the police scanner which leads him into a high-speed car chase with a couple of nasty drug dealers, unfortunately, said drug dealers were armed with actual guns opposed to the knife-wielding punks in the variety store, and Steve gets shot for his troubles.

 

And this is why Captain America carries a shield.

Things get worse when Steve staggers home only to discover that the landlady has padlocked his door due to his failure to pay the rent but things get an immediate turn for the better when that aforementioned beautiful woman from across the hall takes pity on this dumb lug and takes him in like one would a stray cat. It’s here where the film turns up the romantic/comedy angle a notch with hapless Steve living on Jolene’s coach and their relationship is allowed to blossom. One of the nicest elements in this movie is Anne Archer’s strong depiction of a working woman who doesn’t want to be defined by the man she dates, that as sweet and lovable as Steve Nichols is she has her own goals and becoming a wife and mother isn’t currently one of them, “I’ve got dreams of my own, there is no place for you in my life.”  Steve's needs don't fit in with the life she seeks, and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

“Please, go back to your apartment.”

Of course, they will eventually get back together before the credits roll, this being a Hollywood movie and all, but I was quite pleased with the way Archer’s character was written, her arguments about finding her own way in the world without the distraction of Ritter’s character was completely reasonable and even though she does take him back, in the end, it still doesn’t lessen her character one iota. As silly and good-hearted of a movie this was, with a regular guy in spandex becoming a real-life hero, the core message of not giving up on your dreams was handled superbly well, whether that be as a wannabe actor or a beacon of hope for the world.

Stray Observation:

• One of the teen hecklers in this film is a young Kevin Bacon.
• The Mayor of New York is portrayed by the same actor who played the senator in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
• Steve rams the drug dealer’s car with his taxi to get them to crash, but exactly how did he plan on explaining the damages to the cab company?

 

Does he think he's in The French Connection?

The movie does have a subplot where a group of unscrupulous politicians hire Steve as a symbol for their campaign, with Bert Convy as a slick-talking PR agent and Kevin McCarthy as the Mayor’s top aide, but this element comes across more like a third act crisis of faith than a real threat – there are no Doctor Dooms or Thanos to fight in this movie – and there is no doubt John Ritter’s heroic Steve Nichols will ultimately redeem himself both in the eyes of the public as well as in the woman he loves.

Hero at Large is a sweet and endearing film that rests heavily on John Ritter’s charismatic shoulders and it's a movie I can recommend to anyone who has become a little tired and jaded by all the big superhero blockbusters being made today.

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"