Summer Lackluster Is Defined By Scooby-Doo.

The Good: Linda Cardellini!
The Bad: Script, Plot, Lame attempts at humor, Ridiculous acting and poor characters
The Basics: In a just terrible adaptation of the animated series, Scooby-Doo and company journey to an evil island to reconcile their differences. Predictable, not funny and bland.


Some people don't realize how good they have it. That's my theory of Hollywood. If people realized how good they have their lives and careers, NBC would not have canceled Freaks And Geeks and Sarah Michelle Gellar would not resist being a cult t.v. heroine and the idol of millions and rejected further work on Buffy The Vampire Slayer in favor of getting movie roles. However, Gellar was a diva and NBC was piloted by idiots and this is the type of schlock you get: Scooby-Doo.

Scooby-Doo follows the breakup and reunion of the classic crime solving quintet led by Fred. Fred is basically a poser, backed by the brains of Velma and worshipped by the pointless diva Daphne. The group is rounded out by the addle-brained Shaggy and the dog Scooby-Doo. Reunited on an island to solve a mystery of the malevolent force that is taking over young people, the group soon finds themselves falling victim to their old resentments and then learning the greatest lesson of all, which is how each of them contributes to the group to make them the best solvers of mysteries ever.

I still don't get what the point of Daphne is outside looking good. She doesn't really solve the crimes and it becomes evident early on that she is more of a liability than an asset to the group.

That said, the real victim of this movie, outside the audience - which is subjected to an hour of lame humor derived from dogs and urination and possible pot smoking -, is Linda Cardellini. Cardellini is a young actress who has amazing potential that she clearly illustrated as the star of Freaks And Geeks. Here, she is stuck in the role of Velma, which she plays well, but we have to ask how did her movie options get so bad so quickly? This is a young woman who has acting talent, looks good and can handle presenting difficult dialog and genuine human emotions. How does someone like that end up as an appendage to a computer generated dog?

Scooby-Doo, the actual dog, illustrates yet another example of how CGI creators need a good dose of reality. The dog looks like he is computer generated, sticking out in every frame just as sure as he was a cartoon in a live-action movie. He is often lit completely wrong (i.e. in a room lit from above, his underbelly has the same shades as the top of his head) and moves in a completely inorganic way. Sure, he's a talking dog (if you can understand what he's saying), but the point of using computer generated effects is to put into reality those things which are not, while making them seem like they are. Scooby-Doo fails to convince us he is a talking dog surrounded by people who accept that and not a poorly-written computer program designed to deceive us.

Outside Cardellini, the acting is terrible. Poor Rowan Atkinson, whose brief cameo in Scooby-Doo made me seriously depressed. Matthew Lillard, who plays Shaggy, was well cast for his body-type and sound of his voice, but beyond that he has no screen charisma. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a diva no different from how she plays Buffy the vampire slayer. That is to say that she seemed here like Buffy gone bratty, like the few outbursts Gellar portrayed Buffy having at the beginning of the second season, and as a result Daphne seems like more of a withered appendage to the group.

The real loser is Freddy Prinze Jr. He plays Fred as a preening, self-assured egoist who seems confident he could have any woman he wants. That's Fred's character, fine. It's also how Prinze Jr. appeared on the talk shows and such while promoting this movie. In the end, he comes off as just another pretty face trying to make good at acting. He has less charisma than the CGI dog.

There are no deeper messages in this movie, no redeeming morals to make this anything but a waste of time. In fact, if anything, maybe it has just the opposite. As I write this, it occurs to me that maybe Daphne's sole purpose is to be the damsel in distress for Fred. Who needs a movie like that, where the hero is a jerk who puts everyone on his team down and needs one of them in a position of inferiority in order to enhance his standing? Not me. And not you, either.

For other works with Rowan Atkinson, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Love, Actually
The Lion King
Blackadder

1/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Sweet Rides Out The Fame: Sugar Ray's 14:59

The Good: A few tracks come together lyrically and musically
The Bad: Packaging, sound, most lyrics, instrumentals
The Basics: Nowhere near as good as what you've heard on the radio, 14:59 is not worth your time and money!


I've long felt that everyone ought to have a system to how they buy music, mostly to prevent them from appearing at the store every week to cash in used c.d.s to afford new ones. Personally, mine is I only buy a c.d. after I've heard and enjoyed three singles from it. With Sugar Ray's 14:59 I learned that this method is the ideal one. I purchased the c.d. after the second single "Someday" was released. I cashed in 14:59 a few weeks back. Had I waited until the lyrical dullard "Falls Apart" came out on the radio, I would probably never have wasted my money in the first place.

The bright spots of 14:59 are "Every Morning," "Someday," and the non-radio track "Ode to the Lonely Hearted." What these songs have in common are they're well mixed, lyrically interesting and well sung. In short, they have a mid-pop rock tune that is easy to listen to and actually has decipherable, interesting lyrics.

But even "Someday" alludes to the flaws of the rest of the album - it doesn't say much and the rest of the album doesn't say anything (or in the case of their cover of "Abracadabra," nothing new). That is to say 14:59 is largely ear candy. It's easy to listen to some of the tracks (notably the radio singles) but they do not say much. There is no deeper message, nothing to read between the lines. I tend to call this "summer music" because it's the infection pop songs you hear in the summer when wallets seem to open easier for new music.

Add to that that they're not saying anything well or even in a musically pleasing way on the non-radio tracks. Often the songs are musically aberrant, like the jumbled sound of "Live and Direct" which only seems to be on the album to allude to another artist and attempt to make more sales by using his name. The "New Direction" tracks are instrumentals that seem out of place on the album.

Adding to the often bland, unintelligible lyrics are uninspired and incompetent instrumentals. The two "New Direction" tracks are pointless, the duet with KRS-One ("Live & Direct") is downright bad. Add to that the packaging. It sounds stupid, but the only thing more annoying than the songs is trying to find the title of the crappy track on the c.d. case (the track listing is on the front spine).

Outside the wonderful "Someday" and the "better than radio tracks" "Every Morning" and "Ode to the Lonely Hearted" there's nothing even good on the album. It's not that they don't measure up to how good those three tracks are, they're positively bad. If Sugar Ray had better writing and stopped trying so hard to be a rock band, learned more than five notes (or even a few chords!) on the guitar, maybe they could make an album that wasn't so utterly unlistenable.

For other, similar, artists, please check out my reviews of:
The Masterplan - Oasis
Stadium Arcadium - Red Hot Chili Peppers 
Forty Licks - The Rolling Stones

3/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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