¡Scooby!

If you or your children never watched "Scooby Doo, Where Are You!" then it stands by itself as another kids movie to watch with your family. If you're a nostalgic person and love that feeling, then Scooby Dooby Doo not watch.

This will probably be the entry in the Scooby-Doo franchise that is going to equally divide its audience, with each side giving its own valid reasons. Some viewers are going to appreciate the modernization of the story, while others will wish it had stayed in the late 1960s. Some are going to get a kick out of the pop culture references, while others will ask themselves why they are in a Scooby-Doo movie. Some will appreciate the superhero theme, while others will forget that Blue Falcon and Dynomutt have existed in the past. Some will recoil at the childish crude humor, while others may giggle at it. Some longtime Hanna-Barbara fanatics are going to love the tie-in with other characters, while others are going to call it a forced attempt to kick-start a shared universe. It'll be very interesting to see how the overall consensus falls, and it'll also be up to the individual to form its own opinion. At the end of the day, it's a kids' film. That's the best anyone can say about it. It does what it can to introduce this franchise to a younger generation through those quirks and contemporary computer animation, while at the same time, it does have enough weight in the story and aims closer to the source material than more recent attempts, even when it doesn't always digest easy. It'll be up to you to decide where this lands. Obviously, it's more focused at entertaining today's kids than being a great entry in the Scooby-Doo canon. However, if it connects with the long-time meddling kids that grew up with the characters for over half a century, then it has definitely earned its extra Scooby Snack points.

I had so many expectations. Scoob! sets on a completely different track from the original stories, which I would welcome if it was better written. The jokes are unfunny, the movie feels unenthusiastic just like Gina Rodriguez's voice for Velma. Stick to the Direct-to-Video animated films. They're clearly superior.

Scooby-Doo is one property that has probably done just about everything you can think of for a franchise that has gone on for a few decades, I'm not going to even bother listing all the things this intellectual property has had its hand, er, paw in because we could be here all day (or all night depending on when you're reading this...). The news of a big screen reboot just made me go "meh!" at it, on account that this franchise is still going and it seems like they release a new direct-to-video feature or TV series every week at least, but I guess you could do worse since Scooby-Doo these days is mostly stale but not offensive. I didn't mind the look of the characters, you could have done worse in design. I didn't mind the change of voice actors all that much and I like the idea of a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe (Because why not? It's been done before on the small screen and comic strip books). I didn't see it in theatres (Obviously, I don't need to go into the specifics as to why, if circumstances had been different I probably would have seen it in the theater) and I didn't want to spend more than $20 to rent it, so I waited till it came on HBO Max to see it. Overall I would say it's 40/60, 40 percent being good and 60 percent being meh to dire. There are some nice ideas, good voice acting, and funny moments throughout, but the plot isn't particularly well thought out and, as my summary states, it's less of a Scooby-Doo picture and more of a Blue Falcon movie, so much so that I was left to ask myself on repeat "why didn't you just make a Blue Falcon movie, Warner Bros.?" Blue Falcon isn't as well-known a property as Scooby-Doo, so you can have more free reign to do with that in crafting a narrative and potentially gaining a new audience in the process - Worked for Marvel with Iron Man, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and many others. Will the family like it? I think they will, it has problems but it's not what I would call boring either, wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, just tone down the world building and, I don't know, have some mystery to the plot, because last I checked Scooby-Doo is about Mystery Incorporated.

The first 15 mins of this are great. Why they couldn't have just kept this as an origin story of how the gang met and started solving mysteries is beyond me. Instead the story spirals off into a million directions and is filled with tons of poorly executed pop culture references. The animation is stellar, but the plot diminishes this one a lot. I'm not expecting it to be just like the TV series, but my kids got more excited at the beginning of the movie and started to lose interest as it went on. Sometimes I wonder if these screenwriters working on kids movies actually have kids. So disappointing and a big missed opportunity.