Q (Qythero)

What you should know about the negativity: I’m noticing a lot of the more negative reviews are from “elitist” Scooby-Doo fans. They complain about the original voice actors being recasted, about core elements of the franchise being “missing” and other things that softcore fans of the franchise won’t care about. So for more casual fans of Scooby Doo, this is what you should know. Yes, it’s true that the voice actors (aside from Scooby himself) have been recasted, but nobody cares. It doesn’t matter very much that the voices don’t sound exactly like the originals! They’re close enough. It’s the dialogue that actually matters. And the dialogue was reasonably good. The characters act fairly similar to what’s expected, and it’s entertaining. Some people complain that a lot of core elements from the series aren’t present. And guess what. It’s just because it’s 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. don’t get full screen time, they aren’t really the movie’s 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 weren’t bad characters by any means. There are a lot of funny moments and I love Dick Dastardly. He’s well written, and I feel like he had some valid, albeit convoluted, motives to what he was doing. (I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t 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 clichè. Also, it isn’t totally acceptable that Fred, Daphne and Velma didn’t use a lot of their common gags and didn’t 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 aren’t too nit-picky about small inconsistencies with the source material, you should enjoy this movie.

The Cuphead Show! Unfortunately fails to deliver a more story driven look into the world of the Cuphead game; rather, it neglects to attempt such a thing at all. Instead, the show’s storyline is very loosely based on the source material. A few of the iconic characters return from the game outside of the Cuphead and Mugman, but unfortunately they are relegated to fairly minor roles, with most of them only appearing in 1 episode each. The show is nothing like the game in terms of tone, story, pacing or characters, and instead what we get are random stories that at entertaining at best, a drag at worst. There is some coherence between episodes, but not enough to really captivate the viewer. The show is fairly entertaining, but compared to what it could have been, it is bereft of substance. I wanted a show that would, while still being charming and funny, deal with the real story of gambling and soul collecting from the game. Again, I was entertained by the Cuphead Show, but also disappointed.