Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!

Most of the animated Scooby Doo films range between good and great, especially 'Zombie Island' and 'Witch's Ghost'. Didn't care for every single one of them, 'Monster of Mexico' didn't do much for me and 'Return to Zombie Island' was a real disappointment (one that started off well but became a mess halfway through). Being a fan of Scooby Doo, watching 'Happy Halloween Scooby Doo' was never going to be in doubt, while hoping that it would be better than the previous outing.

The good news is 'Happy Halloween Scooby Doo' is an improvement over 'Return to Zombie Island'. The not so good news is that it is still not too great and a long way off from being one of the best Scooby Doo films (towards the lesser end in this regard and of all the franchise's Halloween-themed outings). The atmosphere is great and there are a fair share of good things, but the story could have been a lot stronger and one aspect particularly irritated me greatly. Am not surprised that the opinions have been fairly polarising here.

'Happy Halloween Scooby Doo' does look great on the animation front. Absolutely loved the look of the Jack-o-Lanterns, some very imaginative visuals on them. The music had groove and atmosphere and didn't sound outdated or out of place. The voice acting is much better here than it was in 'Return to Zombie Island', nobody overdoes it and nobody sounds bored. Although Matthew Lillard has still got it as Shaggy, Dwight Schultz effectively makes one suitably uneasy and Bill Nye was quite fun, my favourite turn came from Cassandra Peterson.

Elvira was also my favourite character here and loved how she had a bigger role and an active one. Kind of like a female Vincent Van Ghoul, except without as much Edgar Allen Poe-inspired dialogue. Nye may strike some as irrelevant, personally found him very entertaining and he was useful especially later on. The van is very cool and made me want to have one. Shaggy and Scooby are endearingly goofy as usual and Velma, though too domineering, more tolerable than she was in 'Return to Zombie Island'. A very nice job is done with the Halloween setting, which was suitably spooky, and the film actually does start off very well.

For all those good things, there were drawbacks. The story, with a thin as a wafer mystery, lacks momentum, due to having the feel of a 30 minute episode stretched to a film of just over twice that amount of time, and felt repetitive once the Jack-o-Lanterns were introduced and became a series of chases that weren't massively exciting, well actually on reflection it was one long chase that dominated the second half. The Jack-o-Lanterns are creepy and are imaginatively animated, but part of me wished that they had more to do. The denouement to me was a bit too convoluted and too out of nowhere, the perpetrator was a real surprise definitely but their plan was pretty complicated.

A good deal of the dialogue tends to be excessively silly and doesn't always flow well. Fred is very dull here and too much of a sappy spare part when it came to the mystery solving (which he did not do a lot of), it is hard to believe that this was the same character that was the leader of the gang in the earlier incarnations. Worst of all is Daphne, usually do not have a problem with her but here she is insufferably irritating and behaves in such a juvenile way with some very random and out of place slang phrases that were not hip at all.

Concluding, not too great but it was alright on the whole. 5/10

While I didn't abhor them as some fans did, Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island were certainly lesser Scooby entries, and I have been eager for a return to form. I'm not sure I'm prepared to go that far with Happy Halloween, but it is passable. The visuals are good, and the tone is excellent. It's fun to see Scarecrow here, and the ominous Halloween vibe comes through strongly. The mystery is decent, though I wouldn't say it's as much of a focus as I'd like, and the solution is a cool one but comes out of left field. The side characters aside from Scarecrow simply aren't very interesting - I have absolutely no idea why Elvira continues to hang around, as she was absolutely useless, and if they're aiming for relatability, if I didn't know who she was there's no way kids today do. Mike and his daughter were throwaway attempts at comic relief, and Bill Nye was a cool idea but felt more like a shoehorned Guess Who appearance than a cohesive addition. As always, the main tension is on the characters, and the script for them is the biggest problem with the movie: the humor feels extremely forced, as if it's desperate to stay relevant and capture the attention of "hip" modern kids. Daphne, who has been my favorite character in several recent movie and show iterations (shout out to Be Cool Daphne, the legend), is mind numbingly stupid and pointless here. She does nothing at all related to the mystery, makes a bunch of ill-fitting jokes and slang trash talk, and then has a bizarre obsession with becoming Elvira I did my best to ignore. Fred is fine, and Shaggy and Scooby are undoubtedly the bright spots of the movie, as the only ones with comedic lines that actually work, as they highlight the absurdity of the situations. Velma isn't as grating as she has been in previous movies, and I appreciate that they try to develop some depth to her here, but the mind palace was overemphasized and the realization that Shaggy and Scooby can be good for something doesn't seem to hit home as well as the writers thought it would. The many easter eggs and throwbacks were lots of fun, I do really like the idea and tone, and the mystery was a great idea if just fine in execution. The character troubles (primarily Daphne and Elvira just being terrible) and lack of development of the mystery hold back what could've been a very good movie.

Well, I must admit that I was really looking forward to this 2020 Scooby-Doo animated movie. Why? Well, because it had Cassandra Peterson - aka Elvira - in the storyline as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, herself.

And while "Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!" turned out to be just exactly as every other Scooby-Doo adventure, then it actually had some nice enough surprises and twists to it. But the familiarity of these movies running on the same blueprint is part of the Scooby-Doo charm, isn't it?

"Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!" was watchable, but it wasn't really among the best of the Scooby-Doo animated movie franchise. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it was a bad movie, not at all. It was just a bit too generic in some aspects.

It was nice that the storyline included not only Elvira, but also Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow from the Batman universe. That was definitely a nice twist to the storyline. And I must admit that I enjoyed that.

The art and animation style is very familiar, keeping that traditional Scooby-Doo style to it, for better or worse.

"Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!" is definitely well-worth sitting down to watch, especially if you have kids, but maybe do it around the Halloween time, because the story definitely fits into that theme.

My rating of "Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!" is a six out of ten stars.

After an awfully disappointing "Scoob!" Mystery Inc. is back!

Ok, so not the worst movie. Probably the worst Scooby Doo movie out there, but at least it's still watchable. The guest stars and side characters have more likability than the main cast, sans Velma who absolutely dominates, to the point where the movie is almost about her. Bill Nye was an absolute treat, as wasn't Elvira, both of which are extremely likable and quirky in their own ways here. Shaggy and Scooby get dummed down a bit, but at least they're still funny. It's Daphne and Fred who really get nerfed, with the former being absolutely unacceptable (Fred was already a bit to late to be saved.) The villain is good, with a rather good twist and is still scary enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Although there are some references in there that one would swear are just to prop up the movie. Overall, watchable, with this really being Velma's time to shine, but don't count it as a must watch.