Yes, the time has come for me to finally cover the 2003’s Kids Choice Award winner for Favorite Fart in a Movie: 2002’s Scooby-Doo. If you caught my newsletter last week, you know that I lost my dog this month. Ajax was a spirited, happy, loving, stubborn Jack Russell who was a part of my life for eleven years. Saying goodbye was devastating. I wanted to honor him here because so many of these newsletters were written with him by my side. He truly was the world’s greatest writing partner.
I am too emotionally raw to watch 99.9% of the dog movies out there (I am now understanding why most of them deal with loss in some way) but I figured I could handle Scooby-Doo. It also seemed apropos in light of the Velma backlash. Which I will lightly touch on, but as I haven’t seen the entire series I am suggesting you read this article on The Atlantic for a deeper dive.
Scooby-Doo has been reiterated an almost countless amount of times. 2002’s feature-length film introduces us to a slightly grown-up Mystery Inc. who are all vaguely in what I suspect are their early twenties. The movie jumps right in with little explanation (which I love because, we all know these characters better than we know ourselves at this point) and within the first 10 minutes our beloved gang decides to split up and go their separate ways only to be reunited two years later by a mysterious invitation to “Spooky Island” a tropical, horror-themed resort/theme park that is popular with spring breakers. (It’s also racist and xenophobic, but more on that later.) The gang learns that guests’ personalities are slowly changing and the park’s owner (Rowan Atkinson) is desperate for their help. Though clearly still mad at each other, the gang agrees to stay and help.
Ok, first things first: this movie was written by James Gunn and was not only his first mainstream script, but also his first mainstream success. For those of you out of the loop, James Gunn is the writer behind blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad (that’s the second, better one of those). Since I don’t spend all day cruising IMDB (I know, shocking) this came as a major surprise to me. Even more fascinating, the original cut of the movie was R-rated. The vision was for the movie to appeal to older generations that grew up with Scooby and the gang. But the test audiences did not respond well to the hyper-sexualized, drug-addled, and spiritually void cut of the film, which forced the moviemakers to do a rushed revision where they: edited out cleavage, removed all mentions of “souls” and “demons” and some drug references, and worst of all, they cut a budding relationship between Velma and Daphne. Look, I cannot know if the original cut was excellent, but to me it sounds like it was far better than the cut we got.
What we got was 86 minutes of a rushed plot and some goofy, poorly aged jokes. To its benefit, the movie is extremely self-aware. The physics are cartoony, the characters simple, the plot unreal. It knows it is a cartoon which is in direct opposition to the current criticism of Velma which is that the show alienates its very audience: adults who like cartoons. Our time isn’t wasted with an origin story of how everyone meets and the plot moves at a breakneck pace. You have to be somewhat versed in Scooby lore to follow along properly. That said, there are also moments of complete confusion that have nothing to do with craft. I now realize this is a direct result of the hack job they did after test audiences hated the more grown-up version of the movie. It’s disorienting but I guess not enough to drive kids out of the theaters because Scooby-Doo was a commercial success making almost twice its budget, and got a sequel a couple years later.
But, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a fully xenophobic and racist story. These elements are not just obvious, but baked into the very plot of the film. Though it’s glossed over as not-important by our main characters, Spooky Island employs all indigenous people from the island to run it. One of these men, N’Goo Tuana, (played by a white guy), tells the tale of how the island was once ruled by supernatural creatures who were displaced by the building of the theme park, and, he threatens, that they want their revenge. It’s vague at best what culture this man and others represent. He is partnered with a luchador and everything is loosely “tropical”. What’s worse is that our takeaway as an audience is that they’re evil for wanting to restore the island and push out a white capitalistic owner. Not to mention one of the only Black characters spends the whole movie performing voodoo rituals from a beach hut.
It’s hard to enjoy or recommend a movie that introduces a bunch of racist themes willingly-- the resolution of the mystery is that they save and return the island to the theme park operator rather than the indigenous people-- but I do want to give credit to the actors and casting director on this one before I go. Matthew Lillard as Shaggy (a role he has returned to ever since, voicing Shaggy a number of times over the last 20 years) is perfection and Linda Cardellini as Velma also gets a terrific nod for nailing the cadence of that voice. A very early-in-her-career Isla Fisher as Mary Jane is also another bright spot. And the costuming on the women reminded me of how desperate I was to be hot in 2002. I was a horribly awkward freshman in high school, but a girl could dream right? They look incredible, even with the modesty editing that was put into place.
In the end, I was right about how much I could handle so close to losing my best friend. When Shaggy arrives to save Scooby from losing his soul (long story I did not take the time to explain to you), he asks Scooby, “Who’s your best buddy?” And then, “Who’s my best buddy in the whole wide world?” I just about lost it and teared up. Ajax was my best buddy in the whole wide world, too.
I’ll leave with you my favorite joke and callback. Early in the movie Scooby gets a phone call, and the bartender calls out, “I got a call here for a Mr. Doo.” And some random kid stands up and says, “Uh, Melvin Doo?” And later when he’s about to be sacrificed Scooby points to the same kid, now hypnotized and says “Don’t you mean Melvin Doo?” I don’t care what anyone says, this kind of simple joke still works. So, yeah, the movie doesn’t hold up at all but I cried a little and I laughed a little and fell in love with Matthew Lillard all over again.