Movie Review #61: Scooby Doo and the Curse of the Lake Monster (2010)

 

Ah, Scooby Doo. The most popular and long lasting Hanna Barbera character. I love his very silly adventures. No matter the era. I like the earliest episodes and a lot of the newer stuff and most of the stuff in between (the times it was just Scooby, Shaggy and Scrappy was a blight on the franchise and should be forgotten by everyone.) but there's a thing I just have to say and I'm sorry if it offends younger people than me who make video essays on nostalgic things on YouTube. Scooby Doo does not work in live action. Period. I'm not opposed to live action movies based off cartoons. The original TMNT movie from 1990 is still one of my favorite movies of all time. It's very entertaining and worthy of respect and praise. It's just the cartoons worked differently. TMNT could actually be serious at times and it's shown in the movie (and still has a lot of great jokes) Scooby Doo is silly 100% of the time doing all kinds of things that work well only in a cartoon. 

It doesn't help that Raja Gosnell is the worst mainstream director of movies probably ever. Scooby Doo and Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed are both really bad. They may have had scripts from James Gunn but Raja Gosnell shows that he can ruin scripts from very talented people. I'll give it to Matthew Lillard, dude was very good at Shaggy but I didn't really care for the rest of the cast honestly. Also Scooby Doo looks really fucking ugly in CGI, holy fucking shit is he an abomination even in the bigger budgeted films. Scooby Doo and the Curse of the Lake Monster is the 4th of 5 Live Action Scooby Doo movies. This one was made in 2010 for Cartoon Network. Yes live action stuff on Cartoon Network. I don't get it either.

Yes, there was a Scooby Doo movie with the same cast made a year prior I think. I don't know or care. It was probably terrible. I will point out some of the positives that this movie does have, a Special Appearances thing pops up and I was worried at first, thinking it was some random Nickoldeon or Disney Channel stars that I have no idea whos who but nope. You wanna know who the Random Special Guests of this movie are, well here they are: Ted fucking McGinley as Daphne's Uncle Thorton Blake IV. Marion Ross as a owner of a general store, also the descendant of the evil witch the movie revolves around. Richard Moll as the guy who fills the gang in on the curse and shit. Nichelle Nichols from Star Trek as a Senator lady. Oh and he's not listed but Michael Berryman himself has a nice little cameo. Seriously it was as if they asked ME who should be in this movie as guest stars and actually took my suggestions. It's also nice to know that they are all still alive and get to enjoy the things life entails like eating waffles or playing BurgerTime on the NES. I will actually give credit to the cast of this movie. All of them do really well for their characters. Okay maybe the kid playing Shaggy goes a bit too far in his role but none of them actually annoyed me. 

Now for the bitching and moaning about the weirdly convoluted plot that isn't a lot of fun. First off there's this weird thing where the characters save another character and they fall in love with them. First Daphne is saved by Freddy and she is like OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM. Velma saves Shaggy at one point and for the rest of the movie he wants to put his weiner all over her. Velma is oblivious because men are not really her thing. Anyway this is all just put in the movie to keep them from realizing that Velma is the bad guy of the thing. She gets possessed by the evil witch that Richard Moll tells them about. It happens because she touches one of the moonstones that were a part of the witches evil staff. Oh and her favorite song is in the Light of the Silvery Moon from like 1907 or whenever the fuck. 

So Velma as the Witch uses this actually pretty cool Frog Creature so she can find all of the random moonstones and become more powerful again. Shaggy finds one and Marion Ross has one of them because she's the descendant. She gets the gems and then somehow the power of Shaggy's love singing her favorite song depossesses her but after that they kiss each other and she says they have no chemistry so what? I really don't get this stupid Scooby Doo movie. 

FINAL VERDICT: I like Scooby Doo. He's a lot of fun. I even enjoyed a good amount of the animated movies that I've seen, so it's not like he doesn't work in a film format. This is just a bad lazy movie.