Okay, I’m a big fan of animation, both kid and adult, and I grew up in the 70s. I especially like today’s kid’s cartoons that have an adult appeal (Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Lab, Cow & Chicken etc.)
But just like with all the Flintstones revivals back in '94 all this talk about a Scooby-Doo movie really annoys me because,
[dramatic pause]
[/dramatic pause]
The Scooby-Doo Show SUCKED!!
There are three elements to making good animation:
[ol][li]The artwork[/li][li]The voiceover work[/li][li]The script[/li][/ol]
Well, Scooby-Doo fails miserably on all three!
[ol]
[li]Absolutely no one can deny that the cell animation in Scooby-Doo was the same as all 1970s Hanna-Barbera shows: bare minimum, pacific-rim sweatshop garbage.[/li]
[li]The voiceover work was competent but totally uninspired.[/li]
[li]As for the scripts? Here’s every Scooby-Doo script:[/li]
They go to an abandoned mansion/amusement park/museum run by a kindly old man/woman who has no cutomers because of the monster/ghost who turns out to be the janitor/handyman/nephew who wanted to get the place all to themself and
[again dramatic pause]
"would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddlin’ kids!"
[/ol]
Although I didn’t see it, a Rocky & Bullwinkle movie made sense to me because that show had intelligent and witty writing and great performances by the voice talent.
Even for a kid’s show Scooby-Doo was meaningless drek and I’m tired of people saying how great an idea it is to make it into a movie.
What’s next, Speed Buggy 2001?! Hong-Kong Phooey: The Next Generation?!
Compared to modern animation? Yes, indeedy do, Scooby Doo sucks. Many of the ‘modern’ generation of cartoons have outclassed it, outdrawn it, and outwritten it- Johnny Bravo, Powerpuff Girls, even going back to the early part of this decade and Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Freakazoid, etc.
However, the important point is not that Scooby Doo is bad by today’s standards. What’s important is that Scooby Doo was incredible by the standards of the late '60’s-earlt '70’s when it came out. Go look at some of the crap that was out back then. It sucks. And it stayed bad until the late '80’s. Cripes, I happened to catch an episode of “The Super Harlem Globetrotters”- one of my favorite cartoons as a tyke- and the thing was just putrid. And that’s the general type and quality of cartoons kids were being offered back in the '70’s.
It’s like (to draw a pompous conclusion) Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Any kid listening to it today is unlikely to be particularly impressed- the things that were so innovative and amazing in '67 are old hat (and, in fact, kind of cliched) today. But the album isn’t any less important just because Fatboy Slim has access to remixing materials and studio equipment the Beatles couldn’t even hallucinate back then (and believe me, they tried).
Keep it in context. Scooby Doo was great for its time, and for the age we were. And it doesn’t fall apart quite as badly in revisiting as, say, H.R. Puffenstuff and its ilk(cripes, what was that crap? Who gave Jim Nabors that space suit?).
John Corrado, do you really think Scooby Doo was better than
Fantasia
Bugs Bunny and the WB gang
Fat Albert
Rocky and Bullwinkle
?
What are you comparing it to from the same era (other than Super Harlem Globetrotters)? I simply can’t think of any animated show from any era that is worse than Scooby Doo. I confess some ignorance here; I’ve never seen Super Harlem. But I have seen Woody Woodpecker and several of those forgotten quantity-defeats-quality Hanna-Barbera numbers that I can never remember the names of (uhh, Stop that Pigeon? the one with the race … Penelope Pitstop … the Gruesome Twosome …), and they all beat Scooby hands down. At least there were gags. How funny is it to see Shaggy jump into Scooby’s arms and say “Like, let’s scram!” for the 58th time?
I can think of very few non-animated shows worse than it (which is a different thread). It is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of the weak-marijuana generation - it survives because people hate it, and like to stand at an ironic distance and pretend they like it. I know I’m taking this way too seriously, but the whole 90s / disaffected youth / ironic distance / so-bad-it’s-good movement has me pretty fatigued. Bell bottoms. Huh. If these people had any guts, the would resurrect Cro-Magnon chic: all your clothing must be flayed with your own hands from the body of an animal you or a family member has killed.
See, that’s my point. To me, Scooby-Doo is in the same category as the Harlem Globetrotters show or the Gary Coleman show or all the other HB stuff of the 70s and 80s.
Even the Sid & Marty Croft stuff, although unbelievably corny, is bad in a watchable, MST3K kind of way (hell, I still think Land of the Lost was a damn good show). And if nothing else, it certainly didn’t lack for imagination. Hanna and Barbera would have been better off making cheap, efficient, industrial cartoons about welding or cement pouring. Not kid’s shows.
Like SeinfeldMuch Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and much great art in general, Scooby Doo wasn’t so much about the plot, as the interractions and development of the characters. Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, such is the greatness between Scoobs and Shaggy. Scooby Doo sucks?
All I can say is:
OWWROOOOOAHHH?
[edited to fix a bolding glitch-slythe]
Hail Ants. You have some serious ‘splainin’ to do.
No but seriously. Scooby Doo did NOT suck. It did NOT EVER suck. Maybe a Pup Named Scooby Doo ocasionally did suck, and perhaps Scrappy was irritating as hell, but Scooby itself didn’t.
Now if it sucked, why do so many people remember it with love?
You’d be hard pressed to find a child or adult for that matter, who can’t talk like Scooby.
You say its formulaic? So is a lot of garbage on TV, live action and animated. And there IS such a thing as a running joke! How is a large Great Dane, leaping into Shaggy’s arms, any different from a grey rabbit chewing constantly on a carrot? Or for that matter, different from a catch-phrase? its humorous.
if it was so bad, why did all those people guest star? There has to have been something about it.
The Gary Coleman Show rules! I saw an episode of that very recently on the Cartoon Network! Oh man, that stank so bad I wish I taped it.
If there is one thing I can’t stand about Generation Xers is that we think we’re so cynical and yet we deify all the crap we had to sit through as kids. Don’t get me wrong there was a lot of good stuff from the late 70s-mid 80s (I happen to be a HUGE Bangles fan. No joke.) but my God, Scooby Doo isn’t like Classic Rock. Good classic rock musicians gave a damn about what they wrote. You could tell that the gastropods behind Scooby-Doo just didn’t care.
Damn, when you think of Chuck Jones is his prime, Scooby running all over the place like a spaz just plain sucked. Meanwhile, Chuckers had imbued Wile E Coyote with subtle quirks that made him practically human. The way he’d rub his chin or cluck his tongue or cling to a falling piano for dear life… most human actors don’t have that range.
Plus, everyone can name a particularly amusing bit of WB dialogue, whether it be Duck Season/Wabbit Season or Marvin the Martian saying “Computers are so complicated. I could just pinch them.” There was nothing worth quoting in the HB arsenal. Just predictable lame-ass puns and references to Scooby’s cowardice ad nauseam. Come on, we’re children, not morons.
As for crap cartoons turned into movies, Let just hope they don’t make Laverne & Shirley in the Army: The Movie.
Oh come now, pro-Scoobyists. Enough virtual flatulence. If we’re gonna have a Great Debate, try to debate. Give us a little more than empty “Dont you dare make fun of Scooby” threats. What makes Scooby and his gang of fellow reused animation one-dimensional characters so amazing that they are beyond reproach?
Guest stars? Please. The simple answer is “The writing sucked so bad, the only way people will watch is if we animate a well-loved celebrity.” Gee whiz, Vincent Price shows up in Scooby land. Great. While he’s here, I need to tell him my Egg Magic didn’t come with feet.
[Ignatious Thistle]
Don’t you dare make fun of Scooby. Why, he’s the nicest Great Dane I know!
[/Ignatious Thistle]
Jester knows what i’m talking about up there…
OK but seriously. Why does it rock? I don’t know. Did anyone ever say to the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, or R.E.M., “Why are you so good?” Why…when something’s good, you just know it. Its imbued with perennial goodness. You don’t have to point out reasons why or why not.
Sure it may be goofy looking by today’ “standards,” but good animation does not a cartoon make.
I used to ditch school to watch Scooby when I was a kid. I have a hippie Scooby sitting on my desk at work, right in front of a box of Scooby Snacks. I didn’t encourage this but people at work have decided that I collect Scooby stuff and have given them to me.
Scrappy and Scooby Dumb sucked big time.
I refuse to debate anybody on the merits of Scooby. I haven’t actually seen an episode in many years and would like to keep my happy memories pristine.
I absolutely hated Scooby Doo as a kid. It was the one, the only cartoon show, that I would. not. watch.
For one, I hated “mysteries.”
For another, I hated how the “ghost” always turned out to be a guy in a ghost costume. Damn it, it’s a cartoon! You can do anything in a cartoon! Why not have them be a real ghost! That would have been neat! But nooooOOOOOOooooo!
For a third, every show had the same freakin’ plot! Not only would the villain always have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids, the villain was always always always the very first character that the kids encountered that episode. You didn’t need Velma’s ramblings about how she single-handedly unravelled the plot to know who was Really Under That Mask [TM]. You just waited until the kids met someone – anyone – and that was your “ghost.”
For a fourth, whenever Velma went back over the gimmicks the “ghost” had used to appear spooky, they would always show the piano wires/transparent skis/flickering movie background that they mysteriously didn’t show at all when the “ghost” was chasing Shaggy and Scooby! How can you expect your audience to deduce anything when you hide the damn clues from them?!
And finally, Shaggy never gets to eat! Scooby always steals his food from him! No wonder he’s so damn skinny! I blame Scooby Doo for single-handedly encouraging me to over-eat and become a fat kid. I might be thin right now if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. Bleah.
I seem to be one of the few people on the planet who didn’t hate Scrappy. I mean, it’s not like they made the little goober the hero – he was constantly belittled.
Did anybody besides Daphne have parents who were identified? I remember the episode where the gang visited Daphne’s super-rich parents, but everyone else seems to have sprung into existence through spontaneous generation.
Even when it was new, the other cartoons of the time had a higher quality of writing, plot, character development, and sometimes animation.
But there’s no accounting for personal taste. Personally, I’d never watch it (except for the Johnny Bravo episode where he hooked up with them. That was cool as shit), even if it does show 4 hours a day on Cartoon Network (WTF!!! Like there aren’t any better cartoons? Each half hour, it’s the same freaking thing! cf. plot synopsis above–c’mon, how about a little variety here?).
[Cliff Clavin]
Actually, Shaggy’s voice was originally done by Casey Casem, who dropped out of the show when his religious conscience wouldn’t allow him to be involved with anything having to do with the occult.
[/Cliff Clavin]
Oh, and Snooooooopy? EVERYONE hated Scrappy. Even you, but you just don’t know it yet.
