Directed by:
Raja GosnellScreenplay:
James GunnCinematography:
Oliver WoodComposer:
David NewmanCast:
Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, Linda Cardellini, Tim Blake Nelson, Peter Boyle, Chris Gauthier, Alicia Silverstone (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
Scooby and the gang confront an anonymous masked villain who is plotting to take over the city of Coolsville by wreaking mayhem with a monster machine that creates Mystery Inc.'s classic foes. (official distributor synopsis)
Videos (1)
Reviews (5)
At the beginning, I could barely contain my near disgust, but in the end the film managed to earn two very dirty stars, which I honestly feel ashamed of, thanks to some good special effects and a few funny situations, at least by child standards. In order for this creation to be equal to the original series, it would have to get rid of the omnipresent and unbearable yelling.
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The second Scooby-Doo replaced the haunted island with a "city of mystery" and the appearance of the monsters was visibly better than in the first one, but the whole thing is again spoiled by an infantile script that doesn't even try to entertain the viewer with a "piece of paper". The solid action of the opening museum scene or the mine sequence are unfortunately spoiled by the ubiquitous attempts at humour, which at times wallows in awkwardness.
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Scooby-Doo 2 is clichéd dead weight in terms of the screenplay and suffers mainly from rapid post-production, for which there was only enough time to throw together something colourful with a feature-length runtime. Costly scenes with digital effects were thus given priority over scenes focusing on the characters. The original front-runners Fred and Daphne only complement the more “developed” Shaggy and Velma. Though the digital effects are decent, they are not enough to satisfy the requirements of full-fledged family entertainment. The action/fight scenes (Daphne with a spear, Fred on a chopper) are a positive surprise – Raja Gosnell should have tried his hand in the action genre. I laughed only once, at a scene with Velma dressed in sexy form-fitting synthetics.
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Compared to the previous film, I have to take a star off. The film does follow the path trodden by the first, and in the tradition of most sequels, it tries to be bigger, bigger, and bigger, but something about it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. In fact, it seemed to me that the second Scooby-Doo was made mostly out of necessity and not because the filmmakers were having fun. And that sentiment rubbed off on me more than a few times. It's a shame, because in some scenes, Monsters Unleashed managed to evoke the atmosphere of the original Ghostbusters and definitely had more to offer.
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It's not as stupid as the first installment, at least not at first glance, but it's also not particularly entertaining. The characters are boring and consistently flat throughout. The problem is that from the beginning, it's clear how it will turn out. That wouldn't matter for a short, twenty-minute cartoon episode, but it's a real problem with a feature film. This is an incredible mess and probably won't even appeal to children.
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