Scooby-Doo! Crociera sulla Luna

Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness (2015)

** (out of 4)

A billionaire plans to take some experts into space but five "normal" people also get picked for the trip and sure enough it's Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, Fred and Daphnie. Once up in space everything seems to be going as planned but soon they run into an evil alien.

The latest direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie is yet another very disappointing one. Even though it pays homage to ALIEN, THE RIGHT STUFF and even E.T., the overall feel is just downright flat and boring. By the twenty-minute mark things were already moving at a snail's pace and sadly things never really picked up despite some great animation. There's no question that the screenplay is to blame here as we're really not given anything funny, mysterious or even remotely fun.

This includes a very predictable screenplay that opens with Daphnie failing a driver's test and you know this here is just setting up a certain ending. Even worse is that the alien itself really isn't all that entertaining and I'd argue that the design wasn't all that impressive. Another problem with the film is that the jokes are all rather lame and especially the stuff dealing with Fred putting his foot into his mouth when it comes to two elderly men on the spaceship.

All in all, SCOOBY-DOO! MOON MONSTER MADNESS is a real letdown that has very little going for it.

Sly Baron (Malcolm McDowell) is starting space tourism with a round trip to the moon. He reserves five seats for some lucky lottery winners. The gang happens to win the lucky tickets. When they land on the moon, there be monster.

The spaceship and the moon hotel seem excessive. This is the first try at moon tourism. I doubt the first hotel on the moon would be a five star affair. It's Moon Vegas. It's too much. The modern Scooby Doo is trying too hard when the original is simply the kids solving silly little mysteries.

Scooby and the Mystery Inc. Take it to the space with astronaut suits and space shuttles and a moon monster mystery to be solved, besides a below average story this movie in some way turns out to be an actually nice movie, I mean the makers have made some kind of mark in this movie so that it turns out pretty good . And to point it out : are the jokes , some jokes are really funny in this movie.

This has the vibes of "Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo!", despite predating it by seven entire years. Nothing really seems to matter and the logic behind jokes seems to change on a whim.

So the setup for this one is that the Scooby gang wins free tickets to be among the first people to take an interstellar cruise and end up stranded on the moon as they are hunted by a not-quite-Xenomorph.

One ongoing joke is that Fred thinks his space suit is really cool and refuses to take his helmet off; the joke being that he can't hear people with the helmet on. Except... sometimes he can? And whether or not Fred can hear someone or not changes completely at random. Those kinds of extremely dumb, low-hanging fruit jokes are all over this thing.

Nobody in this movie seems to enjoy it. Velma's skepticism comes off as being a nagging buzzkill in the worst ways. She's constantly being harassed by a paparazzi TV show host and jealous that one of the space crew seems to think Daphne is the smartest member of the gang. And that whole plot point, that Daphne is somehow smarter than Velma, is obviously never going to stick in a series that's 60+ years old. And Fred falls back into the role of everyone barely tolerating his dopey antics.

Most of the supporting cast is annoying, too, from the Steampunk-themed Elon Musk stand-in, to the paparazzi guy, the sports star, and the alien conspirator. A lot of them are written to be funny, but they come from the class of being annoying as a substitute for comedy. It's a lot of facepalm humor.

Also on the list of frustrations: Jennifer Hale playing two different characters and doing the same voice for both of them, barely an octave apart.

There are honestly a million ways to pick this movie a part. At least the animation's pretty decent, and the alien attack scenes are fun. But when it comes to the rest? Not much of a fan, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm the problem, or if most of the people who put these movies together just don't care.

I sat down here in 2020 with my son, whom is a big fan of the Scooby-Doo animated movies, to watch the 2015 "Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness".

First of all, I do like the movie's cover/poster, as it was interesting and definitely kept within the classic feel of the "Scooby-Doo!" franchise. And the storyline also had some appeal to it.

Well, the storyline told in "Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness", while it was definitely within the realm of your archetypical "Scooby-Doo!" adventure, just failed to stand out and be overly noteworthy in the endless sea of animated "Scooby-Doo!" movies out there. Yeah, the storyline just lacked that spark to make it unique. Sure, the movie was watchable, but it was just a plain, old generic and run-of-the-mill "Scooby-Doo!" animated movie. Nothing outstanding here really.

What does work out for "Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness" is the animation and the art style, because it is very true to the classic rendering of "Scooby-Doo!" and it is that unique style that makes the franchise.

And of course, the voice acting. It is always a blast to have the voices of Frank Welker, Mindy Cohn, Grey Griffin and Matthew Lillard in these animated movies, because that is just familiarity and they have the voices that personifies Scooby-Doo, Fred, Velma, Daphne and Shaggy.

But it gets better, believe you me, because the voice cast also includes the iconic voices of Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell, and that was just such a treat to have in this 2015 animated movie. It definitely added something great to the overall enjoyment of it.

However, my rating of "Scooby-Doo! Moon Monster Madness", sadly though, settles on a mediocre five out of ten stars. Because that was exactly what this 2015 animated movie was - mediocre. Watchable for the true fans of the franchise, but for us casual viewers it just didn't make the cut.