By Johnny Donaldson
Collegian Staff
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Directed by Raja Gosnell
Starring Freddie Prinze Jr. Sarah Michelle Gellar
Warner Bros.
Rated PG
88 mins.
Grade: D+
Did the filmmakers really think they were making another round of “Ghostbusters” when they decided to turn Hanna-Barbera’s lovable mutt Scooby-Doo into a live action movie? Did they really think that their bulbous, cartoonish, rubbery looking Doo was a fitting replacement for the simple, two-dimensional charms of the original dog? Did they really think there was a burning need to release a sequel to the original “Scooby-Doo” movie?
These are the kinds of questions that floated through my mind while watching “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed,” a loud, annoying, colorful and wholly unnecessary follow-up who’s existence at least gives a definite answer to that last question. (Like last year’s dud “Tomb Raider” sequel, it proves that just because a film makes money doesn’t mean it deserves a sequel.) The movie is a gaudy, hyperventilating eyesore with flashing colors and frenetic action that may keep little ones diverted for an hour and a half. But there’s precious little wit here to distract the adults escorting their kids to the crime-solving canine’s adventures. For anyone over the age of five, sitting through “Doo 2” is like being detained in cinematic prison.
The movie begins with the Mystery, Inc. gang celebrating the opening of a new exhibit at Coolsville’s Coolsonian museum dedicated to all their past exploits (all the costumes that their foes ever used are on display.) The cast from the last “Doo” all return for there second go around: Freddie Prinze Jr. as pretty boy Fred; Sarah Michelle Gellar as girly-girl Daphne; Linda Cardellini as bookish Velma and Matthew Lillard as ever-afraid stoner Shaggy. Once again, Cardellini fares best, nailing Velma’s vulnerable nerdiness with dead-on aplomb. Lillard is quite possible the single best choice for Shaggy, whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on your tolerance for Lillard himself.
The opening night is a disaster; a black clad bad guy comes in riding a real Pterodactyl Ghost and steals away with all the old costumes. Soon, a trash-TV news reporter (Alicia Silverstone) has discredited Mystery, Inc. on TV and the gang is left to battle a coterie of real ghosts, all controlled by the masked villain.
Who is the baddie? Is it Silverstone, so obsessed with demeaning the gang on television? Is it the museum’s curator (Seth Green) whom Velma develops a crush on? Or is old time nemeses Jonathan Jacobo (Tim Blake Nelson) and Old Man Wickles (Peter Boyle)? Let me assure you, dear adult reader, that you will have the culprit figured out even before director Raja Gosnell’s name appears on the opening credits.
This is the kind of movie where a Crayola box full of blinking, flashing colors is used in place of humor, soul and energy. The writer, as on the first one, is James Gunn who wrote one of the year’s best films in “Dawn of the Dead;” here he flips around to write one of the dumbest. The few times that Gunn and Gosnell make an attempt at appeasing the grown-ups with adult humor, the jokes seem weak and half-hearted. (There’s only one chuckle-worthy Shaggy-as-stoner gag.) The movie seems more intent on underlying its waterfall of pulsing colors with fart jokes then with smart jokes. Just because you are making a movie for the kids doesn’t mean you can’t be sophisticated. “Shrek” and “Finding Nemo” have proven this already.
Much of the cast (Gellar, Green, Nelson, Boyle) are beyond this films’ league and deserve more than what this one-dimensional piffle as to offer (Prinze, no stranger to bad movies, just seems at home here.) This year has already hosted “Agent Cody Banks 2” and “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen;” we don’t need to condescend to the family audience with this.
