Haha! I may not agree with Roger Ebert all the time, but his review for Scooby Doo is pretty dang funny!

[SaltBoy]

Link


SCOOBY-DOO / * (PG)

June 14, 2002

Shaggy: Matthew Lillard
Fred: Freddie Prinze Jr.
Daphne: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Velma: Linda Cardellini
Mondavarious: Rowan Atkinson
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Raja Gosnell. Written by Craig Titley and James Gunn, based on characters created by Hanna-Barbera Productions. Running time: 87 minutes. Rated PG.(for some rude humor, language and some scary action).

BY ROGER EBERT

I am not the person to review this movie. I have never seen the "Scooby-Doo" television program, and on the basis of the film I have no desire to start now. I feel no sympathy with any of the characters, I am unable to judge whether the live action movie is a better idea than the all-cartoon TV approach, I am unable to generate the slightest interest in the plot, and I laughed not a single time, although I smiled more than once at the animated Scooby-Doo himself, an island of amusement in a wasteland of fecklessness.

What I can say, I think, is that a movie like this should in some sense be accessible to a non-fan like myself. I realize every TV cartoon show has a cadre of fans who grew up with it, have seen every episode many times and are alert to the nuances of the movie adaptation. But those people, however numerous they are, might perhaps find themselves going to a movie with people like myself--people who found, even at a very young age, that the world was filled with entertainment choices more stimulating than "Scooby-Doo." If these people can't walk into the movie cold and understand it and get something out of it, then the movie has failed except as an in-joke.

As for myself, scrutinizing the screen helplessly for an angle of approach, one thing above all caught my attention: the director, Raja Gosnell, has a thing about big breasts. I say this not only because of the revealing low-cut costumes of such principals as Sarah Michelle Gellar, but also because of the number of busty extras and background players, who drift by in crowd scenes with what Russ Meyer used to call "cleavage cantilevered on the same principle that made the Sydney Opera House possible." Just as Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" is a comedy about a movie director who forges ahead even though he is blind, "Scooby-Doo" could have been a comedy about how a Russ Meyer clone copes with being assigned a live-action adaptation of a kiddie cartoon show.

I did like the dog. Scooby-Doo so thoroughly upstages the live actors that I cannot understand why Warner Bros. didn't just go ahead and make the whole movie animated. While Matthew Lillard, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Linda Cardellini show pluck in trying to outlast the material, Freddie Prinze Jr. seems completely at a loss to account for his presence in the movie, and the squinchy-faced Rowan ("Mr. Bean") Atkinson plays the villain as a private joke.

I pray, dear readers, that you not send me mail explaining the genius of "Scooby-Doo" and attacking me for being ill-prepared to write this review. I have already turned myself in. Not only am I ill-prepared to review the movie, but I venture to guess that anyone who is not literally a member of a "Scooby-Doo" fan club would be equally incapable. This movie exists in a closed universe, and the rest of us are aliens. The Internet was invented so that you can find someone else's review of "Scooby-Doo."

Start surfing.

 

[Beau]

Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

 

[amnesiac]

OMG that's funny. I think Ebert's negative reviews are always great to read. His review for "Bones" was classic IMO.

 

[Electric Amish]

people like myself--people who found, even at a very young age, that the world was filled with entertainment choices more stimulating than "Scooby-Doo."

What, like whacking off??

amish

 

[piku]

Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

Oh what, you expect every reviewer to watch every freaking episode of Scooby Doo before they see the movie? Please. I agree with his opinion - even if you have never seen or experienced what a movie is about, you should still be able to gain some enjoyment from the flick. If you can't then the director did a poor job.

And he was pretty fair I think.

 

[Nefrodite]

Originally posted by: Beau6183
Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

what? he tells u he's not a fan of the original, he tells u what he thinks as a non fan. whats wrong with that? its called honesty. then he refers you to others hell i used to watch scooby as a little kid, i can't remember jack squat from the show now besides how scooby and shaggy talked. not a single plot have i retained.


its 23% on the tomato meter, guess its a rental at best

 

[Electric Amish]

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183
Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

what? he tells u he's not a fan of the original, he tells u what he thinks as a non fan. whats wrong with that? its called honesty. then he refers you to others hell i used to watch scooby as a little kid, i can't remember jack squat from the show now besides how scooby and shaggy talked. not a single plot have i retained.


its 23% on the tomato meter, guess its a rental at best

Obviously you're not a connoisseur of the genre.

amish

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183 Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

what? he tells u he's not a fan of the original, he tells u what he thinks as a non fan. whats wrong with that? its called honesty.

It's called giving a single sided review with an admission to being lazy. It's like he was forced into doing the review. A good and fair reviewer would at least do a little investigating into the roots of a movie with history and compare it to the original for content. It's like reviewing a movie that was based on a book without reading it. It is possible to give two opinions in the same review.

 

[Nefrodite]

Originally posted by: Beau6183

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183 Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

what? he tells u he's not a fan of the original, he tells u what he thinks as a non fan. whats wrong with that? its called honesty.

It's called giving a single sided review. A good and fair reviewer would at least do a little investigating into the roots of a movie with history and compare it to the original for content. It's like reviewing a movie that was based on a book without reading it. It is possible to give two opinions in the same review.

by the same token every single reviewer should read the book a movie is based upon as most movies ARE based on books. lets see, sum of all fears was 1000 pages, add the 2 books of ya ya sister hood, etc etc etc. reasonable? no. would all the people watching the movie also read the books? no. so is a review based on nothing but a fresh impression of the content valid? yes.



its merely an question of whether the content can stand by itself.

 

[SaltBoy]

Originally posted by: Beau6183

It's called giving a single sided review with an admission to being lazy. It's like he was forced into doing the review. A good and fair reviewer would at least do a little investigating into the roots of a movie with history and compare it to the original for content. It's like reviewing a movie that was based on a book without reading it. It is possible to give two opinions in the same review.

He's reviewing a MOVIE as it stands alone. A movie is not a TV show or a book. A movie is a movie! If we all went by most reviewers opinions on movies adapted from books, we would all be reading books instead. How many movies are better than their book companions? I can probably think of only one -- The Lord of the Rings -- and that's a sketchy opinion at best.

 

[StageLeft]

I think ebert is a nasty old bastard, but if what he says if correc then that is silly. Thing is about this movie I never had any intentions of watching it anyway other than perhaps to rent some bored evening. It looks like total and utter garbage.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183 Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

what? he tells u he's not a fan of the original, he tells u what he thinks as a non fan. whats wrong with that? its called honesty.

It's called giving a single sided review. A good and fair reviewer would at least do a little investigating into the roots of a movie with history and compare it to the original for content. It's like reviewing a movie that was based on a book without reading it. It is possible to give two opinions in the same review.

by the same token every single reviewer should read the book a movie is based upon as most movies ARE based on books. lets see, sum of all fears was 1000 pages, add the 2 books of ya ya sister hood, etc etc etc. reasonable? no. would all the people watching the movie also read the books? no. so is a review based on nothing but a fresh impression of the content valid? yes. its merely an question of whether the content can stand by itself.

We can agree to disagree on this. I find his reviews to be quite irrelevant when deciding upon which movie to see. Just as with any profession, if you want to do a good job at it, then a little research is required - even if this means reading a 1000 page novel or checking the cliff notes out from the local library. He just simply doesn't care. I'm not asking for him to become a fan boy of every movie and whatnot, just, as a reviewer, to keep his own biasness and ego out of it.

 

[BigJohnKC]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish

Obviously you're not a connoisseur of the genre.

amish

What, then, is the genre of this film? Crappy cartoon adaptation films? I haven't seen it, but I imagine it's gotta be in the same category as the Ninja Turtle movies (which rocked, IMO), or.....well I can't even think of any others. Small genre. Maybe it's just a bad movie?

 

[SaltBoy]

Originally posted by: Beau6183

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183

Originally posted by: Nefrodite

Originally posted by: Beau6183 Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

what? he tells u he's not a fan of the original, he tells u what he thinks as a non fan. whats wrong with that? its called honesty.

It's called giving a single sided review. A good and fair reviewer would at least do a little investigating into the roots of a movie with history and compare it to the original for content. It's like reviewing a movie that was based on a book without reading it. It is possible to give two opinions in the same review.

by the same token every single reviewer should read the book a movie is based upon as most movies ARE based on books. lets see, sum of all fears was 1000 pages, add the 2 books of ya ya sister hood, etc etc etc. reasonable? no. would all the people watching the movie also read the books? no. so is a review based on nothing but a fresh impression of the content valid? yes. its merely an question of whether the content can stand by itself.

We can agree to disagree on this. I find his reviews to be quite irrelevant when deciding upon which movie to see. Just as with any profession, if you want to do a good job at it, then a little research is required - even if this means reading a 1000 page novel or checking the cliff notes out from the local library. He just simply doesn't care. I'm not asking for him to become a fan boy of every movie and whatnot, just, as a reviewer, to keep his own biasness and ego out of it.

Well, guess what -- if you read the review, he admits that he genuinely doesn't feel qualified to review the movie. In other words, he agrees with you!

 

[js1973]

How are you seeing bias in his review? He's stating, in so many words, that if you're not a Scooby fan, you're probably not going to get much out of this movie. Have you seen the previews? I have and it looks to me like what Ebert's saying is spot on.

 

[MaxDepth]

Originally posted by: Beau6183
Lazy ass mofo with no intention of giving any fairness to any movie. I hate him.

It would have been a great movie review if it wasn't for those meddling kids. Oh, and Beau6183, too...




Actually, I got to see some undedited footage from the film dailys. Daisy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) looked like a Buffy clone, Fred was totally nowhere (script and actingwise) - I guess SMG had to work her boyfriend into the movie somehow. Wlima, well, Wilma looked good, jinkies!, I mean good! And that just seriously messed my head.

The only ones that stayed true to the cartoon and to the characters themselves were Shaggy and Scooby. So no, Mr. Ebert, the movie from what I saw did not ring true to the original.











And if I ever find out who came up with idea for "ScrappyDo", I'm gonna kill 'em.

 

[ratkil]

I say this not only because of the revealing low-cut costumes of such principals as Sarah Michelle Gellar, but also because of the number of busty extras and background players, who drift by in crowd scenes with what Russ Meyer used to call "cleavage cantilevered on the same principle that made the Sydney Opera House possible."

Waste of time skoorbs? I think not...... ;-)

 

[CPA]

Ebert mentioning boobs and now this!

Is this an adult film or a kid film or both?

 

[Parrotheader]

I actually enjoy reading Roger Ebert's reviews even though I don't always agree with him. What bugs me here is that he's in proabably a VAST minority of people (his age or younger) who've never seen Scooby Doo and don't have at least SOME idea of the overall characters and the series. Yet he assumes this minority is WAY bigger than it probably is and thinks that he's not as big a freak for not knowing something on this as he actually is. This series has been around since what, 1967ish?? Granted, he was already out of college by then but pretty much ANYBODY born after that (or even those who had kids born after that) knows about Scooby Doo. Even my dad who is NOT a cartoon fan knows all about it indirectly because he couldn't help but absorb it when I was growing up. This is what happens when your film reviewer is totally out of touch on a major point in pop culture over the last 25 years.

Having said all that, I think this movie will probably blow too.

 

[Shelly21]

I dunno why people would want to watch this anyway. Scooby snacks? It's just a long running pot joke.

I heard that Tom Clancy movie is better. Anyone wanna go see it?

 

[geno]

He's never seen an episode of Scooby Doo? What a loser! I don't know about you, but I've never run into someone who hasn't at least known what the basis of Scooby Doo is...it's not that much of a secret society, Roger.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: Shelly21
I dunno why people would want to watch this anyway. Scooby snacks? It's just a long running pot joke. I heard that Tom Clancy movie is better. Anyone wanna go see it?

Scooby Snacks = Mushrooms, IIRC.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: js1973
How are you seeing bias in his review? He's stating, in so many words, that if you're not a Scooby fan, you're probably not going to get much out of this movie. Have you seen the previews? I have and it looks to me like what Ebert's saying is spot on.

I'm not saying that I am interested in seeing this show. I'm not, and I'm a good fan of the cartoons. My complaint was his blatent admission of not being a good judge on the film. He would have been better off not writing a review if he didn't think he was qualified.

 

[DigDug]

This thread is a CLASSIC example of pointless dogmatism. Beau186 made a completely uninformed and irrelevent response, based on his own little anti-Ebert agenda and a failure to even READ the initial post, and instead of admitting that prejudice clouded his view, makes an even bigger ass of himself by trying to defend his statement with justifications that are more ridiculous than the original fart he made.

Dude, just shut up.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: BlipBlop
This thread is a CLASSIC example of pointless dogmatism. Beau186 made a completely uninformed and irrelevent response, based on his own little anti-Ebert agenda and a failure to even READ the initial post, and instead of admitting that prejudice clouded his view, makes an even bigger ass of himself by trying to defend his statement with justifications that are more ridiculous than the original fart he made. Dude, just shut up.

Speak what you will. I read the post before I replied. It is just my opinion. You sir are making an ass of yourself by doing exactly what you accuse me of: making completely uniformed and irrelevant posts.