Film Review - "Scoob!"

Scoob!
Directed by Tony Cervone
Starring Frank Welker, Will Forte, and Mark Whalberg

Scooby Doo was never my favorite growing up. I mean, I must have caught some of every animated series when they aired on Kids WB or Cartoon Network. The direct-to-video films from the early 90's were like, peak blockbuster entertainment in the day. The live-action films...I saw the first one. Clearly they've had an impact on a generation because the meme representation is hard to ignore.
This is all to say, while Scooby Doo was never my first choice for viewing, I have seen enough to understand the franchise and what makes it work.

The filmmaking crew behind Scoob do not.

A month so so back, I was able to catch the new animated film starring the Mystery Inc. gang when it was released digitally on-demand (like many other films have chosen to do recently given the pandemic). After months of watching and re-watching favorite films from yesteryear, I was hoping to enjoy a new release. Instead, I found Scoob to be a clunky and absurd film that really has no understanding of its source material.

Scoob starts out promisingly enough, showing us how young Shaggy & Scooby met each other and Velma, Daphne & Fred. The film fast forwards to present day, where the team is meeting with potential business investor...Simon Cowell...alright quick pivot. Random celebrity cameos and appearances were never uncommon for Scooby Doo. There was a whole spinoff series dedicated to them. But of all the celebrities to cameo...you thought Simon Cowell would be the most fun-no, the most relevant? For younger audiences??? Anyway...Simon Cowell refuses to invest in the team because he thinks Shaggy (Forte) and Scooby (Welker) have no value, and bring nothing to the team.

This offends Shaggy and Scooby and they go to blow off some steam at a bowling alley (Because bowling is funny?) and they are attacked by an army of robots disguised as bowling pins (I don't know...) They're rescued by the superhero Blue Falcon (Whalberg), and his partners Dyno-Mutt (Ken Jeong), and Dee-Dee Sykes (Keirsey Clemons). If you're still with me I'm about to lose you. The superheroes reveal that the robots are minions of Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs), who is after Scooby because apparently, he is the last descendant of Peritas, the dog of Alexander The Great, and with only Scooby, can he unlock a portal to the underworld...guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades...

I wish I had a witty remark here but I'm kind of taken aback by what I just had to write.

So, for the few out there that don't know (like the people that made this film) Scooby Doo and the gang are all about solving mysteries, that normally revolve around some monster or phantom. Most of the time, the creature would be unmasked as some disgruntled character we met in the first act, but starting around the late 90's (By the way, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island? Scooby Doo & The Witch's Ghost? Easy recommendations.) they started facing real monsters and supernatural threats. So it's not unheard of but it's never been the norm. The point being, supernatural threat or not, there was always a mystery to solve at the heart of the story. There is no mystery to solve in Scoob.

No mystery to solve in a film where your main characters run a company called MYSTERY INC. That sounds good. I mean, they do uncover bits of information about Dastardly's plan/Scooby's heritage here and there, but it's only when they need to keep the wheels spinning on this lackluster, globe-trotting "adventure". Most of the film is focused on Scooby and Shaggy hanging out with the superheroes. That's another big mistake. Scooby and Shaggy are separated from Fred, Daphne and Velma for 3/4 of the film. We know barely anything about these characters or how they work together before the plot drives them apart. You can't just expect audiences to care about them because we know them from past iterations. This is a fresh start and you have to lay the groundwork.

Which brings me to my next point. This film was clearly meant to start a cinematic universe for Hanna Barbera characters (Ugh.) and like so many other failed cinematic universes, they put the cart before the horse. Dick Dastardly is the villain. Blue Falcon is a supporting player. Even Captain Caveman, voiced by Tracy Morgan, has a minor role. The powers that be weren't concerned with making a good Scooby Doo film, they were concerned with kickstarting a franchise, and honestly, a simple Scooby Doo film without all these other tacked on elements, would have done that on its own.

This film feels like it was crafted by a focus group. "Oh well kids like superheroes so let's put Blue Falcon in it and make it like a superhero...and make him dab!" "Kids love Minions, so let's give the villain an army of cutesy robots!!" "Let's put Simon Cowell in this because kids love-"No. Stop. Wrong. Anyway, said focus group came to all these conclusions and decided this would work for a film about a talking dog and his friends who solve mysteries...

Alright I should probably say something good about Scoob...the animation is nice. The first half-hour showed promise, and I like how they transition to present day by recreating the original series's intro. The voice acting is mostly good. Voice acting legend Frank Welker once again does a nice job of bringing Scooby Doo to life. Will Forte...I mean, most of the time he's fine as Shaggy. Jason Isaacs has a nice "mustache-twirling" villain voice for Dick Dastardly. Actually, I though Dastardly's motivations in the film were ok, and honestly just based on them alone, they could have reverse-engineered a better script and film.

Zac Efron as Fred is the worst. It's not his fault. This film has no understanding of the property so naturally they turn Fred into this clueless, cringe dude-bro. Ok one truly positive thing about this film, is Whalberg & Jeong as Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt. They did get some genuine laughs out of me (I think, I watched the film in late June...). I loved their dynamic and if there's any justice in this world the two of them would get their own film.

I don't know, Scoob! sort of low-key broke me. Pretty much everything wrong with animated films, and to an extent, just filmmaking in general these days, is on display here. It doesn't understand or care about the property it's trying to adapt. It's just a muddled, corporate mandated, mess. My recommendation to you is to watch some of the older Scooby Doo shows or films and just skip this junk. If you need a new animated film to watch this year, go back to Onward on Disney Plus...or give Trolls: World Tour a shot. I didn't see it but apparently it's VOD release was good enough to possibly kill movie-theaters as we know them. Cinema is dying...

Film Review - "Joker"

Joker
Directed by Todd Phillips
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert DeNiro, and Zazie Beetz

Ever since his initial creation, the origin story of Batman's arch-nemesis, The Joker, has been in a sense a mystery. Over the course of the character's history, writers of both comics and screenplays have given him a multitude of different backstories. In the great graphic novel The Killing Joke, The Joker says in regards to his past, "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another…if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!" Even in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's version of the character tells it a few different ways.

This is a long way of saying that while Todd Phillips' Joker isn't necessarily the definitive origin story of The Clown Prince of Crime, I did find it the most chilling, gripping, and arguably the most realistic.

Clown-for-hire Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) has dreams of being a stand-up comedian, but has a lot…everything working against him. He's a loner who's ostracized at his job, constantly tending to his elderly mother (Frances Conroy) in a rundown apartment, in therapy and suffers from a neurological disorder that causes him to laugh uncontrollably at all the wrong times. Oh and he's "just not that funny."

As Arthur's luck goes from bad to worse, from being fired to learning the truth of his parentage, he goes deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole from which he'll emerge transformed, as a psychotic criminal the world will come to know as Joker.

There's a lot of layers to the story that takes it beyond a typical comic book film, but calling it a comic book film seems wrong. Yes the protagonist is called Joker, there's a family called The Wayne's, and it takes place in a city called Gotham, but those details come secondary. This is a character study akin to early Martin Scorsese films that has Batman elements peppered in for extra flavor. The film comments on a lot of heavy issues, like mental illness, social class, identity, moral obligation, and the very subjectivity of comedy? (I mean that's my interpretation). That's a lot to unpack in a two-hour film, and I'm not saying the script lacks focus, but it is jumping through a lot of hoops at once. It's a heavy ingest.

It's kind of amazing to see these issues illustrated through comic book characters. Ironically, by doing so it makes them more real, tangible, in a way. Conversely, this is arguably the first time it feels like The Joker could exist in the real world. He's doesn't fall into a vat of chemicals and come out a psychotic lunatic. Here he is a monster of our creation. All the hot-button issues the film tackles are very relevant to the world right now and tied to his story. Not to get into spoilers but when you watch the film, and you have that realization, it's kinda unsettling...

Joaquin Phoenix does deserve an Oscar nomination. He is carrying the entire film on his shoulders. What he does equals Heath Ledger's work in The Dark Knight. He makes you sympathize for this character, while also being scared of him. Phoenix keeps you on the edge of your seat for the majority of the film. This was the first time in a while I felt significantly uncomfortable in the theater, not knowing where character was going (I mean I was uncomfortable in Endgame, but that's like a different type of discomfort…I thought Captain America was gonna die.). Phoenix's take on The Joker stands out in an already iconic catalog of portrayals of the character.

Phoenix is surrounded by a superb supporting cast. Robert DeNiro is perfect as late-night host Murray Franklin. It's not a huge role but DeNiro gives it his all. Zazie Beetz plays Arthur's neighbor Sophie with plenty of heart and humor, as if she's almost a beacon of hope in his life. Frances Conroy plays his mother Penny, and she plays off Phoenix well. She's sweet but like her on-screen son, there's an edge to her.

The film is beautifully shot. There's a lot of memorable camera angles and movements that feel like panels from a graphic novel, but also work to emphasize the bleak hopelessness of this world Todd Phillips has crafted. The music by Hildur Guðnadóttir (That was a copy-and-paste job. No way I could have spelled that. Sorry Hildur.) is amazing. It's never in your face, but it sticks with you. The music is almost haunting, and truly conveys the grim nature of the scene(s).

The old saying goes that evil isn't born, it's made. Joker is a cautionary tale about the role we play in potentially making villains like this (and I do mean this version. Not the ones with exploding cream pies and poisonous laughing gas). It's another fine addition to the colorful history of the character.
It services the source material while also creating something rooted in realism. It's dark, gut-wrenching, and impactful to a point where it stays with you long after leaving the theater. No funny business.