Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire

I've been an avid Scooby fan in the last five years. Ive followed the great dane from Zombie Island to the live action movie. Now we join him at Vampire Rock. After four quite successful animated films I had high hopes for Vampire Rock. However this film is a drastic departure from those films, as Zombie Island was from the original series. There is a nod to those films present in the form of the Hex Girls and the Cyber Chase game, but thats it. The mystery machine is now the old van and Fred has his ascot back. All that the previous films had built up has gone. On the plus side Velma's orginal voice is back and sounds fantastic. Also worth a mention is the excellent reengineering of the old Scooby Doo Where Are You? incidential music. Overall the piece feels like it is pandering too much to the general populous' preception of Scooby Doo and this does stiffle the creativity. One last thing though please if there is to be another film could have Scoot Innes back as Scooby?

Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire (2003)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

I was always a fan of the TV show so I thought I'd check out one of the movies since this is the only month that seems fitting. Scooby and the gang go to Australia for a rock concert but band members start turning into vampires. I was really, really disappointed in this thing because everything that made the TV show entertaining is missing here. I guess you could say this movie was dumbed down for kids but expanding this out of a 30-minute running time also hurts thing because often times the mystery is put on the back burner while we see stupid stuff ranging from concerts to other items. The actual mystery that is here seems watered down and gets boring after the first twenty minutes. I wasn't too impressed with the vocals either, which is strange since four of the original members were together again for this.

I re-watched this film for the first time in years yesterday, and it was really nothing special. After four animated Scooby-Doo films that took risks and offered us stuff that is new ("Zombie Island" through "Cyber Chase"), we get a forgettable entry that really doesn't do much outside of the old Scooby-Doo formula.

The gang are their usual selves, which is pretty nice, I guess. It was also cool that we get to see the Hex girls again, even if they didn't do much. As usual, we get some funny scenes here and there and I will admit that the design for the vampire was pretty cool.

It doesn't offer much outside of that. The story is typical Scooby-Doo fare, and there wasn't anything to make it feel like a real "movie." This was really nothing more than an extended TV episode. Several Scooby-Doo movies suffer from this, but this is one of the worst cases.

It took too long for the plot to get started. There were too many filler scenes that added nothing and felt like they were there only to pad out the movie's length. The supporting characters aside from the Hex Girls were also nothing to write home about.

The climax in the mountains is kind of routine, and the reveal was nothing shocking. However, I kind of liked the gang performing the Scooby-Doo Theme Song at the end.

This is definitely one of the most by-the-numbers entries in the long-running franchise. I would say it's okay to watch if you've got nothing better to do. However, it isn't really that much worth your time and there are better Scooby-Doo movies out there.

RATING: C

This was definitely a step backwards after two very good outings with Alien Invaders and Cyberchase. The problems I had with this one were:

1.) The group has reverted to their old van and clothing. Why? It really makes things looked dated.

2.) They need to get Innes back for Scooby. I think they knew the guy doing the voice this time didn't match well, because Scooby doesn't say a lot in this movie.

3.) Maybe it was just me, but the animation seemed to have dropped a notch in quality.

4.) The music was disappointing.

Hopefully the next release returns to the previously successful formula.

Like others have said the story and animation aren't up to par this time. I don't mind the look of the gang being classic, it fits with the inspired soundtrack. But the biggest issue for me is the soundtrack never stops. There doesn't seem to be a moment where there isn't something playing in the background, at times it makes it hard to hear the excellent voice cast.