[4.6/10] I don’t have much any particular affection for Scooby Doo or Mystery Inc. as characters. I don’t have any real dislike for them either, but outside of the occasional crossover with superbly lighthearted *Batman: The Brave and The Bold*, I just never really watched their adventures. They’re cultural icons whose tropes and running bits I know from cultural osmosis, but I just don’t have a connection to them or their prior movies and television series.

What I do have an attachment to are the stars and creatives behind *Scooby Doo* the 2002 film that blends live action and CGI to bring the cartoon stars into the real world. Almost everyone in the main cast has done something to earn a little (or a lot of) trust from me, whether it’s Sarah Michelle Gellar (*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*) playing Daphne, Linda Cardellini (*Freaks and Geeks*) playing Velma, Freddy Prinze Jr. (*Star Wars Rebels*) as Fred, Matthew Lillard (everything from *Scream* to *Twin Peaks*), as Shaggy and even Rowan Atkinson (*Blackadder*) as the owner of Spooky Island, where our heroes are summoned to solve the inevitable mystery. And when I found out that the screenplay was penned by James Gunn of *Guardians of the Galaxy* fame, who’d thereby proved his mettle as someone who could write an amusing film with good group dynamics, that sealed the deal.

Well, woe is me, because all those great performers and a sharp writer came together to make a film that is a gigantic waste of time. *Scooby Doo* is the kind of movie that leaves me asking “who is this for?” Gunn and director Raja Gosnell seem to want to aim their film at longtime fans, with lots of tongue-in-cheek references to longstanding fandom critiques and complaints. But they also seem to be pitching the film at teenagers, given the casting, the pop rock soundtrack, and mild hipster-y deconstructions of the old cartoon’s rhythms. And at the same time, it seems to be meant squarely for kids movies, with broady gags out the wazoo, snootfuls of slapstick and physical humor, and extended fart jokes that could only elicit chuckles from the middle school set.

The best you can say for the film is that it means to try to please everyone, and ends up pleasing no one. The kids in the audience are liable to completely miss the riffs on the old show. The older fans are likely to be annoyed at the “just playing pretend” vibe of everyone’s performances. And the young folks in the audience seem less likely to appreciate the movie’s twelve-year-old sense of humor.

*Scooby Doo* is also painfully, painfully in and of the year 2002. There is a cameo from none other than Sugar Ray, a song from Outkast, and the sort of generic pop punk tunes that don’t even aspire to be timeless. The cast, great though they may be, is a who’s who of actors famous for playing teenagers in that era. And the CGI is embarrassingly bad.

The last part is the most forgivable, but those visual choices really date the film. For one thing, Scooby Doo himself looks terrible. Rather than going with a dog who looks distinctively cartoony, or trying to make him look like a real life canine, *Scooby Doo* tries to split the difference, and gives us a pup who looks like some strange genetic experiment whose interactions with the main cast are unconvincing. The same goes for the creatures that Mystery Inc. contends with in the middle portion of the film, whose generic design and herky jerky motions would make Ray Harryhausen weep. And the big bad monster shares the same inchoate vibe and phony-feeling interactions that make the whole interaction seem visually uninteresting.

The story is no great shakes either. The catalyst of the film is a Mystery Inc. break-up that happens after Fred gets all the attention and accolades for the team’s successes, Daphne is tired of always being the damsel in distress, Velma is sick of others taking credit for her insights, and Shaggy and Scooby are ready to enjoy the snacktacular life away from all things spooky. The movie centers on the group reuniting and overcoming their bad blood to solve one more big mystery.

The problem is twofold. For one, the group is only split up for maybe five minutes’ worth of screentime, so their supposed-to-be-tense reunion was no weight and no stakes. We don’t know what the Scooby Gang are like apart from one another, so it’s hard to care about them linking up once more, especially when that quick turnaround results in a lot tell don’t show. There’s only minimal payoff to any of the characters’ mutual beefs or arcs, making the supposed schism come off perfunctory and pointless.

The other issue is that the mystery itself is dull and not especially intriguing. There’s a pod people routine going on, where the visitors to Spooky Island come back brainwashed and spouting bland youth jargon. The movie its schizophrenic about what happens next, devolving into uninspired chases, monster attacks, and mythology gags that never coalesce into something that makes sense, let alone excites. It’s clear that the mystery portion of the film is an obligation, one that lets Gunn and Gosnell play around in this world with these characters, without the good humor or amusingly-drawn characters to make a hangout movie work.

The one bright spot in the film is Matthew Lillard as Shaggy. In a movie that all but wastes its stable of talented performers, Lillard is the only one who shines. As much as I enjoy the other main characters in other things, each plays these cartoon characters as though they’re just playing dress-up. It’s a hammy film, so in some ways that’s warranted, but Lillard is the only one who fully commits, seeming as though the Hanna-Barbera creation burst forth from ink and paint and became flesh and blood. It’s a testament to his skills that he returned to voice the role in subsequent animated projects. There’s a level of buy-in and specificity to his loony, unrestrained performance that’s missing from the rest of the film as a whole.

Unfortunately, that performance is wasted on a big aimless mess of a film, that stumbles in terms of mystery, character, humor, and plenty more. *Scooby Doo* is perfectly fine as a trifle, or if you’re a diehard Mystery Inc. fan who just has to see everything the scooby-snacker and his friends do. But for anyone else, even for someone who love a lot of the people involved the movie, you should forget this one, and hope that you can blame it all on some meddling studio executives.