Scooby-Doo! Le Clash des Sammys

Let's be real for a second, Scooby-Doo movies are not high art, and that's perfectly okay. Thankfully the people over at Warner Brothers are aware of this and have never taken the franchise too seriously.

I've not seen many of these movies but this one was pretty okay. The animation looked like classic Scooby-Doo which I'm sure would please die hard Scoob fans, but it didn't really do much for me.

The plot is the standard Scooby-Doo affair, you can more or less figure out what's going on in the first half an hour. The main stand out of this film however is the humour. Velma's anger at a website font choice, Fred debating which net to use to catch the ghost, a 12 year old YouTube rapper doing a concert at a rodeo in a ghost town? Hilarious. It doesn't sound funny but goddamn most of the jokes land really well.

Unfortunately they try to cram too much into this movie, there were a bunch of throwaway gags and characters that served no real purpose and overall the story and animation were pretty bland.

So if you want a funny Scooby-Doo movie that you can watch with your brain turned off, go for it. If you're looking for something with an engaging western story, go watch High Noon.

I enjoyed it very much probably the best movie in animation

Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown (2017)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Scooby and the gang head out West for a vacation. This vacation spot is the location of Shaggy's relative who was a notorious outlaw. Sure enough, right before the gang shows up a ghost of the outlaw shows up terrorizing people. Now it's up the the gang to track down the bad guy.

SCOOBY-DOO! SHAGGY'S SHOWDOWN isn't the greatest film in the series but it's certainly a step up from the past few titles. I was really nervous going into this one because, to be frank, a couple of the previous movies were pretty darn lazy, boring and just not all that interesting. This one here is pretty much standard material but it's at least fun and worth watching.

I really liked the bad guy this time out. It's a gunslinger ghost but he glows green and shoots out green fire from his gun. I really thought the animation was very good on the bad guy and he was just a fun villain to root against. Scooby is given a pretty good part here and Shaggy is forced to do some stuff he doesn't normally do. In fact, I enjoyed seeing them two having to take action and be brave for a change.

Not as good as the older ones but still not bad. Micucci or whatever her name is has the most annoying voice. She's got a voice that is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I like the music though, true spaghetti fan. Annoying characters, annoying voices. Never minded Welker, even Lillard. Dapper Jack is obviously cool. I like the ending. Reminds me of all the cowboys' that are gone. All the good guys; John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Wilke, Lee Van Cleef etc. So the ghost of Dapper at the end brought a tear to my eye thinking about all the cowboys that are gone..... I like the movie, just have to fast forward thru annoying characters & Velma of course.

Scooby and the gang head out to the Wild West. Of course, when they get there they find the town is being terrorised by a ghost - outlaw Dapper Jack, who (wouldn't you know it!) turns out to have been an ancestor of Shaggy's!

The story's good. There are some hilarious lines and situations (Fred trying to shoe a horse with a car-jack, and Shaggy and Scooby's ridiculous rock-side plunge are two that stick out), as well as some touching ones. The artwork and animation are excellent. And whilst I'm not a huge fan of the western setting, the movie makes the most of it with just about every cliche you can think of (and I mean that in a good way!). Even the title music has more than a hint of Ennio Morricone.

There are a couple of issues. 1) There are way too many featured characters who contribute absolutely nothing to the story. They have a lot of lines, but serve no purpose whatsoever. And 2), the movie really hits a slump around the 60 minute mark, with a dragged out rodeo/parade sequence, and a completely shoehorned mini pop concert by one of those pointless characters. It's as though the makers suddenly found themselves five minutes under the 77 minute runtime and had to start padding. Once it gets back on track it soon picks up, but that slump definitely robs the 'big reveal' of some punch. Thankfully, Frank Welker, Grey DeLisle, Matthew Lillard, and Kate Micucci bring it as they always do, with solid support from the rest of the voice cast. And there's a nice little surprise scene just before the end credits.

Without the time-wasting this would have been an easy 8/10. Fortunately, what's good still gets it a 7.5.