With all the new Netflix movies to watch every month, sometimes all you need is a nostalgic flick to bring back some fond memories. So when I learned that the James Gunn-written live-action adaptation Scooby-Doo was leaving Netflix on February 28, I had to revisit this outrageously fun cult classic.
Prior to his success of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and The Suicide Squad, the CEO of DC Studios penned two iconic movies based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Scooby-Doo.
When the movie was released in 2002, it was met with largely negative reviews, the one that shocked me in particular was from The Guardian, which hailed the movie as “incredibly leaden” and “unutterably boring.” Honestly, I don’t stand for this kind of slander because while it’s not one of the best Netflix movies and suffers from a 32% Rotten Tomatoes score, it’s still incredibly fun and entertaining.
Scooby snacks, anyone?
The first Scooby-Doo movie thrusts a start-studded cast into a story that feels faithful to the animated series. In it, the Mystery Inc. gang consists of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne Blake, Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred Jones, Linda Cardellini as Velma Dinkley, Neil Fanning as Scooby, and Matthew Lillard as Shaggy Rogers – a role he was born to play, might I add, and one he still reprises in several animated Scooby-Doo series now.
Scooby-Doo sees the Mystery Inc. gang individually invited to investigate strange happenings at a spooky amusement park, two years after a bitter break-up. The crew must reunite to solve what’s possessing the college students staying at Spooky Island.
With its timeless goofy humor and slapstick comedy, the Scooby-Doo movie became a smash hit that’s still quoted and remembered to this day by people the right age. So it was only right to produce a sequel two years later with Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, which is also leaving Netflix on the same day.
In Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Mystery Inc. must save Coolsville when an evil masked figure brings to life all the old monsters they exposed in a bid to ruin their reputation. The second movie was also met with a poor critical reception, and we never got a third Scooby-Doo movie.
While I mourn the loss of a potential trilogy, the Scooby-Doo movie is still a clever take on the franchise’s history and remains a hilarious crime solving comedy caper with its perfect casting and clever adult humor references.
One thing that’s for certain is that Scooby-Doo proves that not everything has to have modern style or rich substance to be a good movie – sometimes all you need are some genuine laugh-out-loud gags.
So if you’re looking for some casual entertainment and a movie that doesn’t take itself seriously, then you should definitely watch Scooby-Doo before it leaves the best streaming service.
