Scooby-Doo (review)

Dear God, but when Matthew Lillard -- who has the highest Skeeve Quotient ever recorded -- is the best thing in a movie, you know you're in deep doo-doo. Deep Scooby-Doo-Doo, actually. Lillard (Thirteen Ghosts) at least believes in his character, however unlikely he is: Shaggy's best friend is a talking dog, an unconvincing CGI talking dog at that, but Lillard imbues him with a dopey stoner likeableness. It doesn't take much to stand out in this crowd, though. Sarah Michelle Gellar (Scream 2) as Daphne proves that Buffy is all she's got in her of even passing interest, Freddie Prinze Jr. (Head Over Heels) as Fred is so terrible an actor than he can't even convincingly sport a dye job, and Linda Cardellini (Legally Blonde) as Velma leaves characterization to her prop eyeglasses. The mystery-solving team of the early 70s Saturday morning cartoon show was more believable than this bunch. Why bother to remount this toon for the big screen, anyway? At best it was boring, at worst it was idiotic, and any camp value that it might hold for Xers who grew up on this stuff is thrown away on the kiddification it's gone through -- the tepid attempts at winking irony, which might have saved this standard Ghostbusters/Gremlins knockoff, fall flat, while excruciatingly long sequences are given over to kindergarten crap like farting contests. Scooby-Doo's place in the history of pop culture had already been secured thanks to its obvious progeny, The X-Files. Now, its legacy is sullied by the likes of Freddie Prinze Jr. And we haven't even seen the sequel yet.