To say that the second Scooby-Doo movie is an improvement over the first isn’t really much of a compliment, as a night of UPN sitcoms would have been more entertaining than that disaster. But with Raja Gosnell’s Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, the Time Warner military industrial entertainment complex seems to have come up with a proper, summer-style kiddie flick that nostalgia-craving Gen X-ers can enjoy as well.
Mystery Inc. is invited to an exhibit at the Coolsonian Museum (located in Coolsville, a name which is either sublime, stupid, or sublimely stupid), which celebrates the Scooby gang’s most famous cases by displaying the costumes of the people they unmasked. They get the full red-carpet treatment, and even Velma (Linda Cardellini) gets some screaming adulation courtesy of a pack of Sapphic lookalike fans. But they barely get a chance to sample the canapes when an caped villain straight out of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers busts the place up, bringing a pterodactyl to life and stealing all the monster costumes in the process.
Since this is a film and not a Saturday-morning cartoon, the gang has more to contend with than a silly ghost or haunted house. They’ve got press issues (Alicia Silverstone as a muckracking TV reporter named Heather Jasper Howe, who always quotes Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Fred out of context) and Velma’s fixation with the museum curator, Patrick Wisely (Seth Green). There’s also a dose of—get this—character development, as Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (voiced by Neil Fanning) try to prove to the gang that they’re not screw-ups.
The film has many of the same problems as its predecessor, from an over-reliance on special effects to finding the newest, lowest-common denominator to sink to (Scooby’s flatulence plays a crucial role during the climax). But James Gunn’s script makes more of an effort to be clever and, most importantly, brings the movie back to its TV basics: sticking Mystery Inc. inside a creepy old complex dealing with an angry old man in some intricate getup.
More often than not, the jokes fall flat, but Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Geller are engaging in their willingness to send up their own teen-idol status, and though Scooby is still a CGI nuisance that demands getting used to, Lillard’s Shaggy is still frighteningly dead-on, and his goony energy carries the film through its lamer patches. Also, Monsters Unleashed quickly gets its most obvious product placement out of the way. Thankfully, there’s also no sign of Scrappy-Doo, which really should count for something, right?
Image/Sound
Garish in all the wrong ways, the video on this Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed DVD is certainly eye-popping, but probably not as clean as the studio probably hoped for. You’d think that with the amount of colors occupying every frame that the film proper would have some life to it. Edge enhancement is scarcely a problem, but there is some dirt noticeable throughout, and though color saturation is remarkable, I could have sworn I saw bleeding from time to time. Dialogue is crisp on the Dolby Digital surround track but the effects are on the flat side. I remember the electric monster in the film packing an explosive punch, but on this DVD his footsteps scarcely register.
Extras
Let the excitement begin! From bad to worse: “True Ghoul Hollywood Story,” a mock exposé on the film’s monsters in the E! True Hollywood Story tradition; seven excrutiating minutes of “delicious” additional scenes (with optional commentary by Raja Gosnell), two music videos (Simple Plan’s “Don’t Wanna Think About You” and, get this, Big Brovaz’s “Thank You (Falletin Me Be Mice Elf Again”), two audiovisual puzzles for the kiddies, a “Triple Threat” making-of documentary hosted by the film’s CGI Scooby, and “Dancing Dog,” an intimate look at one of the lowest moments in the history of popular culture. Not only does this horrendous feature compile all the dancing the hippity-hopping Scooby does in the film, but it also looks to teach us how to “dance just like him”! Rounding out the disc are trailers for The Polar Express, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Aloha Scooby-Doo, and a plug for the film’s soundtrack.
Overall
Those who got a kick out of seeing Shaggy with big breasts may want to head straight to the “Dancing Dog” feature, which will teach you how to dance just like Scooby.
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