... about as well as a soggy potato chip.
Let's start with the positives. Linda Cardellini is great as Velma and Matthew Lillard is as has been said uncannily spot-on as shaggy. The Scooby CGI isn't half-bad, for the period. The Scrappy-Do treatment is incredibly satisfying for adults who found him an annoying Mary Sue.
Unfortunately, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne and her now-husband Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred just don't cut it, acting-wise, and this dampers the chemistry of Mystery, Inc. pretty badly. And the script doesn't make enough clever use of Scooby and Shaggy to really show off their chemistry.
Ultimately the film's problem is that it doesn't know whether it wants to be a "wink-wink" to adults who remember the show fondly or kiddie fare for the little tykes. It tries to do both and comes up flat. To this end, some of the racier innuendos were omitted from the final cut, though they wouldn't have redeemed the movie had they remained: they weren't very subtle or pertinent.
The movie needed a stronger Daphne and Fred, as well as a more determined showcasing of the "nuts and bolts" of the original series, with self-referential, double-layered humor. That's a pretty tall order, but it shouldn't be impossible working on the kind of predictable template Scooby Doo offers. Actually, it's the only way a movie based on such a franchise could possibly work.
Let's start with the positives. Linda Cardellini is great as Velma and Matthew Lillard is as has been said uncannily spot-on as shaggy. The Scooby CGI isn't half-bad, for the period. The Scrappy-Do treatment is incredibly satisfying for adults who found him an annoying Mary Sue.
Unfortunately, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne and her now-husband Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred just don't cut it, acting-wise, and this dampers the chemistry of Mystery, Inc. pretty badly. And the script doesn't make enough clever use of Scooby and Shaggy to really show off their chemistry.
Ultimately the film's problem is that it doesn't know whether it wants to be a "wink-wink" to adults who remember the show fondly or kiddie fare for the little tykes. It tries to do both and comes up flat. To this end, some of the racier innuendos were omitted from the final cut, though they wouldn't have redeemed the movie had they remained: they weren't very subtle or pertinent.
The movie needed a stronger Daphne and Fred, as well as a more determined showcasing of the "nuts and bolts" of the original series, with self-referential, double-layered humor. That's a pretty tall order, but it shouldn't be impossible working on the kind of predictable template Scooby Doo offers. Actually, it's the only way a movie based on such a franchise could possibly work.