Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998)
This time, the monsters are real!
You probably thought I was going to skip kid-friendly movies this entire month, didn’t you? Well, surprise! I may not be a connoisseur of Hanna Barbera, but honestly I can sit down and watch some Scooby-Doo. So gather the kids and keep an eye on your sandwich, tonight we check out Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
The gang has grown perhaps a bit tired of the tired routine and gone about their different ways. Daphne and Fred do a television show, Velma has a book store, and Shaggy and Scoob are at the moment checking luggage for smuggled foods. When Daphne mentions missing the gang during an interview about her next season visiting various haunted places across America, Fred comes up with a great surprise for her - the gang is getting back together! After ending up with more of the same old same, much to her disappointment although she’s still enjoying being back together with everyone, they get invited to a real haunted place by one of it’s residents. In the middle of the bayou, on an island with way too many cats, the gang is about to find out that ghosts, zombies, and monsters are real.
It’s perhaps not the newest story now - there’s an entire suite of movies and the likes now that keep on the premise of “real monsters” within the Scooby-Doo universe. At the time though, there wasn’t all that many of them if I can recall correctly, so the premise of real monsters was still quite novel. It also had the gang not together for a while - so it had a few things that really kind of let it feel fresh. It doesn’t entirely stray from the old formula however - we still get plenty of chases, plenty of people in suits (in the montage portion), Jinkies, spooks, music, and an unquenchable hunger for food. The gang’s dynamic largely feels the same when back together, and overall it’s just as family-safe as any other Doo flick or episode - most the horror is largely overrun by comedy - although there is that part about pirates driving everyone into the bayou so they can get eaten by gators - but nothing really explicit is ever shown or anything like that.
The actors do a good job. There’s plenty of emoting in the words, while also having some familiarity. Accents will be fine or perhaps atrocious depending on which region you are used to. As someone not near a bayou in the slightest, I find the accent enjoyable on the characters who have it. There’s also that one character who will nag at you because you totally recognize that voice and somehow it’ll completely override the other person that you’ll feel stupid you didn’t recognize. Some you may find a bit exagerrated, but really that’s par for the course and part of the charm of the Doos.
The routine continues.
The animation is also pretty run of the mill. Most the time it’s passable, The movie is in HD, so it does show a little bit of static here and there when brought up to the ridiculous size I’m watching it on. It’s also not really in widescreen - but both of these aren’t really all that surprising, considering it’s a made for TV movie and super duper ultra high def is still relatively recent for the most part. Things move pretty fluidly, body movements largely seem natural, and most of the time details look pretty good. The most standout moment of animation is the transformation scenes towards the end. There’s a few times details are sorta muddy, particularly a few times where it cuts to a wide shot of a scene when it’s almost like it lost focus - but some of that could just be, again, that I’m watching this on a way larger screen-space then intended.
Given it’s an animation, there really isn’t much to get into for effects. I mean, it’s all animated! It looks animated, and not the semi-animated semi-CG animated look that you get with some of the new age stuff out there. This is great for fans of the classic cartoon styles, maybe less impressive for those who prefer the newer breed of stuff. Colors are great though, and there’s a few moments that I guess would fit more into effects then animation necessarily. Things like the lens flare on the Mystery Machine as it’s pulling in. It looks good, most the time it even has some nice shading involved - although it’s got that old school animation feeling where you look at an object and go “background art, but something will interact with that door.”
The last bit I like to usually talk about is audio, and it’s pretty good here. Like I said, the line deliveries can be a bit emphasized at times, but you can hear it all. Balancing is good. The songs, cheesy as they may be, are also quite catchy. I’ll admit that when it comes to movies, I prefer the one with the band of rockin’ gals all up in their Goth attire for music, but the songs got two catchy songs beyond the normal Scoob theme. Enough to feel fun and enjoyable for someone who isn’t a super young kid, while also still retaining the energy that the kids will enjoy.
The ghost without the most.
Let’s be honest, Scooby is a fine bet for a thing to watch with the kids if you have em, or perhaps if you want a little blast of nostalgia. To some extent, even the live action ones have some charm to them, even if perhaps I wouldn’t label them to be “as good” as most the animated ones - although in all honesty, most the animated stuff I’ve seen is largely the earlier stuff, so take that for what it is. It has the classic animation style if that’s your thing and looks largely decent enough - although it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to remaster it at some point if the demand was ever there. It’s easy enough to say it feels like an extended-run of a normal episode - so if you’ve seen any Scooby-Doo then you’d know what your looking at.