Connor came home from school a few weeks ago asking about Scooby Doo, which he heard about from his friends, so we figured we should netflix the original Scooby Doo: Where Are You? mysteries to let him see first hand what it was about, and while we were at it, we pre-screened the two live action movies to see if they were appropriate. In short, no.
There are all sorts of problems with the movies that I could complain about: that Daphne is basically Buffy in purple (I mean, they didn't even bother with a red wig, much less a decent dye job!) only more of a "Buffy" than the actual Buffy; that they hint at unresolved feelings between Velma and Fred in the first half of the first film and then back waaaay off and pretend it never happened; that the second movie in general essentially ignores the existence of the first; that the characters ,who are pretty two-dimensional in the original series, are further flattened to embody a single aspect of their personality taken to the extreme; but really, all of that would be nitpicking when the creators of the movies show a much more basic misunderstanding of their source material. So:
Scooby Doo is not just some goofy series chronicling the adventures of a group of "groovy" kids and their talking great dane, it's about the triumph of the rational mind over superstition and mysticism.
In the original cartoon, every time the gang unmasks another villain, they reaffirm that there are no ghosts, there are no monsters, and there's a logical explanation for the strange things they've seen. In essence, they are carrying on the good work of Mr. Holmes. The Scooby Doo movies betray this heritage, as do a number of direct-to-video incarnations. The jury is out on whether the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo should be pardoned. Thankfully the creators of Sherlock Holmes did not.
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