Scooby-Doo e o Abominável Homem das Neves

I sat down here in 2020 to watch "Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!" from 2007 with my 10 year old son, as he enjoys the "Scooby-Doo" animated movie quite a bit. And since we hadn't already seen this 2007 animated movie, we found the time to catch up with it.

And I must say that "Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!" was definitely an enjoyable animated movie. Sure, it was basically and essentially the same as every single other "Scooby-Doo!" adventure. But isn't that part of the charm?

The animation in "Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!" was good, and the drawing style too. It is great that they keep holding on to the traditional and classic drawing style that we grew up with. It keeps a sense of familiarity to the franchise.

As an animated movie, having a proper voice cast ensemble can make or break an animated movie. And luckily they had put together a good crew for voicing the various characters in "Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!". With the likes of Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Mindy Cohn and Grey Griffin to do the core characters. But "Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!" also have such great and noteworthy voices of Rene Auberjonois, James Hong and Alfred Molina on the cast list.

It was actually interesting the way they opted to keep the mystery of the yeti - aka. abominable snowman - at the end of this animated movie. That was definitely something I enjoyed.

If you enjoy the "Scooby-Doo!" animated movies and adventures, then the 2007 "Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!" is definitely a must watch, because it is an archetypical "Scooby-Doo!" movie, for better or worse. I am rating it a six out of ten stars.

OK, the start is pretty hysterical, from how everyone ends up where they do to the NOA knock off weather station bucking for a Howlin' Wolfman Rock and Roll DJ with about 12 listeners total. And all with a throwback character from Loch Ness and that always feels like a nod to Scooby fans.

Respect.

But, unfortunately, it has one of those strong starts and one of those endings that are so weak you can't even remember who the villain was after fifteen minutes.

What was that? Right, totally unmemorable.

But it is a cartoon, and the first half is funny enough to love, so who cares if it finishes weak?

Chill Out, Scooby Doo! (2007)

** (out of 4)

Fred, Velma and Daphne are on vacation in Paris where they're supposed to meet Shaggy and Scooby. The only problem is that the two misfits end up in the Himalayas Mountains at the same time a mysterious snow creature has been spotted and it doesn't take long for everyone to meet. CHILL OUT, SCOOBY DOO! is one of the most boring features I've seen from the beloved dog and his gang, which is pretty shocking because the location and monster should have led to a much more entertaining film. Just to say how bad this one is, my son who absolutely loves everything Scooby pretty much tuned this one out after about twenty-minutes and it was a real chore trying to get him to finish it. There are all sorts of problems here but the biggest is that the filmmakers turn Scooby and Shaggy into a couple of idiots. Yes, the series and feature movies have always gotten laughs out of them but the attempt at humor was just so forced and so over-the-top that I couldn't help but get annoyed at it. The supporting laughs with the rest of the gang also fall flat and in the end there's really nothing funny to be seen here. The snow monster was a plus as it looked terrific and the Himalayas were a terrific location but it's just too bad more wasn't done with it. The original series had an episode called "That's Snow Ghost," which is the thing you should check out over this feature.

This was one of my favorite scooby doo movies or just content. It has a good mystery and the comedy is nice.

This was actually a pretty interesting movie. This was the last movie Joseph Barbera worked on, and it is thankfully the last one Sander Schwartz worked on. He was the one that ruined Scooby-Doo in 2002, and again in 2006. However, I'm quite happy to say that I liked this one. The "Pirates Ahoy" one was pretty good, despite being merely to cash into the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trend. When I first heard of this, I figured it was going to be another Snow Ghost/Creature/Demon terrorizing a ski lodge or something similar. But instead it has this mystical Indian thing about the snow monster, which is pretty unusual for the franchise. Also, Shaggy is thankfully voiced by Casey Kasem in this one instead of that Scott Menville like on "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!" But Frank Welker probably needs to practice voicing Scooby; he still makes him sound like Brain, the "Inspector Gadget" dog he voiced (now we need Cree "Penny" Summer as Velma and we'd be all set!) One thing that made this rather interesting was that it focused more on Shaggy and Scooby-Doo than the rest of the gang! It could be because of the "Get a Clue" series, though the animation is not done in that crude Flash style but in the "What's New Scooby-Doo" style used for the 2004-present made-for-video movies. It was pretty funny seeing Shaggy as a DJ (Casey Kasem is well-known for being a DJ actually!) The sound effects factor, they only used the classic H-B sound effects for exaggerated comedy sequences with Scooby and Shaggy. This is ironic, because when Warner Bros. Animation made the Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse cartoons back in 1967 to 1969, they relied on using the Hanna-Barbera sound effects a lot, even the same ones over and over! There weren't any thunderstorms here, so Castle Thunder wasn't used, let alone other storm SFX. Fred was still acting rather clueless like in "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" (I thought he was going to blame Red Herring on being the monster!) and it was nice to see his ascot at one part. I also enjoyed Daphne's complaining about going on another mystery. This also might be the last movie to use a Hanna-Barbera logo at the end, which will be good because H-B wasn't involved in producing the movie; Warner Bros. Animation did all the work. It's just as odd as seeing an H-B logo at the end of a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon! Because I saw this on Cartoon Network, the credits were too small and I couldn't tell if there was a Joe Barbera dedication, but it did dedicate the movie to Iwao Takamoto (the guy that designed the Scooby gang). It would've been nice to see a little animated bumper dedicating the movie to Joe Barbera before the H-B and WB closing logos, like on "Zombie Island" (they had Scooby feed some cats that he fought with earlier and dedicated it to Don Messick). However, I recommend this, especially if you want to see something different than "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!"