Blu-ray Review: Double Feature -- Scooby-Doo 1 & 2: Scooby-Doo (2002); Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)

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As Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress and all-around “girl power TV icon” Sarah Michelle Gellar revealed in an interview, originally – and much like the satirical update of The Brady Bunch Movie – the concept for the big-screen, live action Scooby-Doo adaptation was intended to skew towards a hipper teen to adult audience.

So instead of long, painfully unfunny scene catering to the lowest common denominator of those who love scatological humor comprised of nothing but Shaggy and Scooby trying do outdo one another flatulence-wise, the original plan was to construct the film with jokes playing off inferences we've all made about the characters from Hanna-Barbera's late '60s Saturday morning cartoon, from Shaggy's munchies to Velma's relationship with Daphne.

Unfortunately, ambitious and downright risky comedy was abandoned in favor of the tried-and-true Hollywood formula of lazy gag-writing as toilet jokes were in and everything we loved about the original series was left out in order to make it as commercial as possible.

Nonetheless, Matthew Lillard's eerily uncanny portrayal of Shaggy goes beyond simply a dead-on impersonation and it's even more impressive when you consider the fact that he's bringing an animated character to life.

For eight years later, Lillard's Shaggy remains the one great discovery of the two-film Warner Brothers franchise since he's continued to lend his voice to Cartoon Network Original Scooby-Doo Movies and the latest TV series to introduce a new generation to the generations-old show.

Ultimately however, the main thing the two movies achieve is an overwhelming desire to erase them from memory, go back in time and revisit the classic series.

And while I do grant that each film does have its moments of bright energy and throwback loopy chase sequences involving secret passageways and creepy contraptions that feel highly authentic, so much is lost in the translation that it's hard to enjoy them for very long.

And although it doesn't take much to dumb down an already admittedly formulaic original series, Scooby's greatest failure is in its downright, dubiously bizarre blend of a CGI Scooby with the live action Mystery Inc. detectives that distracts us to no end.

While Freddie Prinze Jr., Gellar, Linda Cardellini and Lillard all look the part as Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy complete with their immediately identifiable color-coded wardrobe, once they share the screen with the technological amateur hour creation that is the series' namesake of Scooby-Doo, the only thing we can do is stare in jaw-dropped horror.

Although there is a slight improvement in CGI in the second picture, it's an even greater head-scratcher when you realize that the other computer generated monsters and ghouls onscreen in both pictures are far more believable and -- at times -- a bit too intense for young viewers, than the flawed four-legged canine.

And unfortunately for the folks at WB who went to great lengths to release this double feature in Blu-ray format, needless to say, high definition calls far more attention to the awkward combination of live action with CGI in Doo.

Had the entire feature been animated or a trained real-life dog been used instead, director Raja Gosnell's movies may have fared slightly better or at least not have screeched to a total halt whenever Scooby's in the picture, thereby making this mistake that much more unfortunate since the last thing we should be OK with leaving on the cutting room floor is the pooch that started it all in Hanna-Barbera's original mysteries.

Much more entertaining than the tonally all-over-the-place first flick that was obviously still finding its footing as the gang investigates a strange “spell” that seems to have taken away the personalities of college students at an island vacation destination, the second movie centers on the return of villains from the detectives' past.

Turning into a PR nightmare as the arrival of some of Mystery Inc.'s greatest ghouls (including ones from the original series) coincides with the opening of a local criminology museum in their hometown of Coolsville, the detectives must battle to save their reputation right along with their community in a far more cohesive second installment, penned by the first film's screenwriter James Gunn.

Despite raking in an enormous box office take for the original 2002 summer popcorn picture that no doubt played on people's love for the series, neither time nor the jump to high definition Blu-ray has enhanced my appreciation for the movies. Instead, this release only strengthens my concern for Raja Gosnell's upcoming live action take on another cartoon classic with Smurfs.

And although I wish they could initiate a moratorium on both talking dog movies and big-screen send-ups of small-screen material, it's worth noting that every once in awhile exceptions should be made.

Perhaps to make up for this disaster, the former editor and frequent Chris Columbus collaborator turned director Raja Gosnell eventually aced the dog movie market with Disney's underrated Beverly Hills Chihuahua which reteamed him with his Never Been Kissed leading lady, Drew Barrymore.

Nonetheless, it's safe to say that the price is most definitely right for WB's holiday-themed double feature Blu-ray release to deliver both movies in one for those willing to indulge their love of the series enough to look past the many, many shortcomings of the films, perhaps if only to watch Lillard deliver lines -- rather than excess gas -- as Shaggy.

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FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

What Love Is

Director: Mars Callahan

In The Tao of Steve we learned that guys don’t do opera, in Swingers we learned that every guy needs a wingman and in the movies of Kevin Smith, we learned that guys gossip more than a sorority. Yet, having worked in the theatre, I can confidently tell you that unless they’re desperately trying to woo a date or are over the age of 55, straight guys seldom do theatre.

With undoubtedly this in mind and in an effort to blend theatre together with Swingers and Chasing Amy, writer/director Mars Callahan got in touch with his inner screwball and served up What Love Is, a film so foul it would make Kevin Smith blush and one where dialogue whips by so quickly that the Gilmore Girls heroines would tell them to slow down for fear of a speeding ticket. A raunchy hybrid of sitcoms and confessional theatre and set during a particularly raucous Valentine’s Day night, nothing about this wicked talk-a-thon feels authentic as audiences find themselves half expecting applause or canned laughs after certain punchlines and characters actually enter the room on cue like Norm on Cheers or Kramer on Seinfeld.

When he discovers empty closets and suitcases by the front door, Tom (Cuba Gooding Jr.) reads the obligatory Dear John letter left for him by his girlfriend who’s decided to walk out on him after three years of cohabitation and realizes that in addition to his heartbreak, he must contend for an impromptu party he’d obliviously decided to throw to celebrate what he’d hoped would be his engagement.

Before the other guests arrive, his four boyhood friends trickle in one-by-one (and always on cue) and, with their varied outlooks and attitudes offer Tom advice and speeches for the film’s opening forty minutes that seem so loud, chaotic, and lewd, one wonders if Callahan, perhaps budget strapped, offered a bonus to whichever actor can deliver his monologues the fastest, thereby saving precious film stock and shortening the running time to roughly ninety minutes.

Matthew Lillard sets the film’s tone early on as the self-described misogynistic and homophobic Sal who, saddled with the film’s most shocking yet memorable lines, attacks his character with a ferocity I didn’t realize the actor had in him and it’s easy to imagine that his agent will be mailing his entire opening segment to David Mamet in the hopes of scoring a role as one of the prize-winner’s legendary boors.

In fact, Lillard is so repugnant yet compulsively fascinating that the other actors are nearly helpless in his wake, although the fault seems to lie largely in the script which finds Andrew Daly faced with portraying a one-note, ridiculously penned gay stereotype, Sean Astin relegated to portraying a Birkenstock wearing, granola eating New Age hippie tired of always being labeled as the friend to beautiful women and the writer/director, who turns in a nice performance in an uninteresting role as the happily married Ken.

How and why these characters still remain friends is a mystery as San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Harlaub memorably described his view of the group by asking viewers to “imagine if the pack from 'The Breakfast Club' were still stuck in detention twenty years later.” While they repeatedly explain that they’ve known each other since grade school, the men in What Love Is prove just as often that they haven’t evolved much since then and it’s all the more apparent when, almost halfway through the film women begin arriving at the party (played by Gina Gershon, Anne Heche and others) and as they walk through the door, must endure starring in a stripper fantasy.

Of course, women and men are as different as Mars and Venus as the media will constantly remind so with little in the way of explanation, Callahan gives the women an abridged opportunity to delineate their own pet peeves and attitudes about dating, love and sex by placing them in the bathroom (of course) where they prove that women can be just as crude as the guys. Again as Hartlaub explained, “If you’re in your late thirties and still trolling for hookups in trendy bars, these characters will probably speak to you. If not, you’re almost certain to find them annoying.”

In other words, consider this reviewer annoyed and while I held out hope that once the two sexes would coexist in the same scene, sparks and words would begin flying, the film’s final act proves to be its most lifeless when cliché induced unsatisfactory conclusions are reached. As rude and clipped as the opening forty minutes were of the film were, had Callahan kept up the pace and managed to write the rest of the supporting players with as much force as he did for Lillard’s Sal, it may have been a successful melding of theatre and film, yet as released and given a bland title destined to blend into the video store shelves, there’s not much to love about What Love Is.