What you should know about the negativity:
Iโm noticing a lot of the more negative reviews are from โelitistโ Scooby-Doo fans. They complain about the original voice actors being recasted, about core elements of the franchise being โmissingโ and other things that softcore fans of the franchise wonโt care about. So for more casual fans of Scooby Doo, this is what you should know.
Yes, itโs true that the voice actors (aside from Scooby himself) have been recasted, but nobody cares. It doesnโt matter very much that the voices donโt sound exactly like the originals! Theyโre close enough. Itโs the dialogue that actually matters. And the dialogue was reasonably good. The characters act fairly similar to whatโs expected, and itโs entertaining.
Some people complain that a lot of core elements from the series arenโt present. And guess what. Itโs just because itโs a different movie! If we think back to the usual formula of the franchise, we notice Fred, Daphne and Velma primarily solve the mysteries. The focus is primarily on them. Usually, Shaggy and Scooby are just there for jokes or to be used as bait for a good chase scene. But for this movie, the focus is taken to a different angle. Instead, the focus is on Shaggy and Scooby and the growth of their friendship. So while it is true that the other members of Mystery Inc. donโt get full screen time, they arenโt really the movieโs focus. It would be kind of bland of they just kept regurgitating the same formula into show after show and movie after movie, so just think about this as the franchise trying to do something different.
The good parts of the movie are fairly plentiful. The graphics and animation are great. The characters, though some of them, I feel like took up too much of the screen time, like the Blue Falcon, they werenโt bad characters by any means. There are a lot of funny moments and I love Dick Dastardly. Heโs well written, and I feel like he had some valid, albeit convoluted, motives to what he was doing. (I donโt want to spoil anything so I wonโt go into detail about that, though.)
There are, of course, negatives about the movie. That is inevitable. The plot is a tad predictable. And the moral is pretty clichรจ. Also, it isnโt totally acceptable that Fred, Daphne and Velma didnโt use a lot of their common gags and didnโt have all of their personality traits. Velma never actually says her catchphrase, Genkies, at all in the movie. Fred has also been unnecessarily dumbed down.
So while the movie has flaws, as long as you arenโt too nit-picky about small inconsistencies with the source material, you should enjoy this movie.