20 years on, Scoo­by Doo is still a thrilling­ly sil­ly throw­back teen comedy

Grow­ing up in the ear­ly 2000s, the live-action Scoo­by-Doo movie was a reg­u­lar Sat­ur­day night video rental in my house – 20 years since its release, the film evokes mem­o­ries of the can­dy-coloured, celebri­ty-obsessed zeit­geist of the ear­ly noughties. 

Released in 2002 and based on the pop­u­lar Han­na-Bar­bera car­toon, Scoo­by-Doo fol­lows a group of sleuthing friends known as Mys­tery Inc. com­prised of the beau­ti­ful and pop­u­lar Daphne Blake (Sarah Michelle Gel­lar); the equal­ly beau­ti­ful and pop­u­lar Fred Jones (Fred­die Prinze Jr.); braini­ac Vel­ma Dink­ley (Lin­da Cardelli­ni); scaredy-cat Shag­gy Rogers (Matthew Lil­lard) and their talk­ing Great Dane dog, Scoo­by-Doo (voiced by an Aus­tralian, Neil Fanning). 

The film opens on a typ­i­cal Scoo­by-Doo scene, with the spooky gang in an emp­ty toy ware­house, crack­ing the case of the Lunar Ghost. Daphne is yet again cap­tured by the vil­lain, and Velma’s plan is shot to hell, but due to some crafty skate­board­ing through the fac­to­ry line by Shag­gy and Scoo­by, the Lunar Ghost is suc­cess­ful­ly de-masked, and once again Mys­tery Inc. has saved the day.

What should be yet anoth­er cel­e­bra­tion (with a per­son­al thank you from Pamela Ander­son in a cameo role), brings long-sim­mer­ing ten­sions to a head: Daphne is sick of being the one that gets kid­napped all the time, and Vel­ma is over the fame-obsessed Fred always tak­ing cred­it for her ideas. Despite Shaggy’s best efforts to implore that ​“best friends don’t quit,” the gang from Coolsville is splitsville. It’s not until two years lat­er that the friends reunite, hav­ing all been invit­ed to solve the mys­tery of zom­bie-like col­lege stu­dents on Spooky Island, a theme park and spring break destination. 

Even though the Scoo­by-Doo car­toons first aired in 1969, screen­writer James Gunn (now best known for his work on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and DC’s 2021 reboot of The Sui­cide Squad) and direc­tor Raja Gos­nell work in a mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ty, trans­pos­ing the heart and hijinks of the orig­i­nal series into the new mil­len­ni­um – most preva­lent is a self-aware­ness that presents itself as iron­ic humour, and gives the cartoon’s groovi­ness a Y2K makeover.

Gunn’s script pokes fun at the cheesi­er parts of its source mate­r­i­al, while also address­ing what the orig­i­nal car­toons wouldn’t. Sex­u­al innu­en­dos are pep­pered in, and pop­u­lar fan inter­pre­ta­tions of Shag­gy as a ston­er are ref­er­enced by giv­ing him a love inter­est named Mary Jane (played by Isla Fish­er), an old-school euphemism for mar­i­jua­na. One of my favourite lines comes from Vel­ma, who com­ments while inves­ti­gat­ing a bro­ken-down cas­tle ride, ​“The only thing miss­ing is a mind­less zom­bie,” which direct­ly pre­cedes Fred’s entrance through a side door. It’s a joke that could have come straight from the car­toon, but in the con­tem­po­rary con­text takes a sub­tle dig at the con­fla­tion of van­i­ty with being an air-head. 

By break­ing up Mys­tery Inc. in the open­ing scene, the film gives the gang’s female mem­bers room to gain agency in a move typ­i­cal of the Girl Pow­er fem­i­nism that was pop­u­lar through the 90s and ear­ly 2000s. It is sig­nif­i­cant that Vel­ma speaks up for her­self and demands respect, and Daphne – now a mas­ter at karate and self-defense – is no longer the damsel in dis­tress. Por­trayed by Gel­lar, who was already known to kick ass on screen as Buffy in Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, it seems only nat­ur­al that Daphne is also a force to be reck­oned with. In the new Mil­le­ni­um, girls save them­selves and look hot while doing it.

This kind of stunt-cast­ing is present in the rest of the film. Nineties heart­throb Fred­die Prinze Jr plays vain pro­to-him­bo Fred – a nat­ur­al leader, much like his home­com­ing king char­ac­ter Zack Siler in She’s All That (1999). Lin­da Cardelli­ni entered the scene with her por­tray­al of the dead­pan and smart out­sider Lind­sey Weir in the short-lived tele­vi­sion series Freaks and Geeks (1999 – 2000), mak­ing her a nat­ur­al choice to play the brainy Vel­ma with such rev­er­ence. Most icon­ic of all, Matthew Lil­lard per­fect­ly deliv­ers the earnest scaredy-cat Shaggy’s catch­phrase ​“Zoinks!”, that even though the film was crit­i­cal­ly panned, the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus can’t help but praise Lillard’s per­for­mance as a stand­out. Best known for his role as hor­ror-film obsessed Stu Mach­er in the self-ref­er­en­tial meta-flick Scream (1996), the piv­ot from play­ing a scary-movie obsessed glee­ful killer to a ner­vous wreck who vehe­ment­ly does not ​“do” aban­doned spooky cas­tles, adds anoth­er lay­er of irony. 

Fea­tur­ing a brain-wash­ing cult that tar­gets col­lege stu­dents, Scoo­by-Doo shares sim­i­lar­i­ties with 2001’s Josie and the Pussy Cats, which also fea­tures the theme of social­ly-con­di­tioned young peo­ple. This recur­ring plot point speaks to the ris­ing fear of the hyper-media world of the new mil­len­ni­um. With young peo­ple as tar­get­ed con­sumers, there was an assump­tion that pop music, 24-hour tele­vi­sion and movies were turn­ing young people’s brains to mush. How­ev­er, where Josie used pop music and con­sumerism to cri­tique and con­demn cap­i­tal­ist struc­tures of media con­sump­tion, Scoo­by-Doo embraces it into the fold of its self-awareness. 

The brain-wash­ing train­ing video Fred and Vel­ma stum­ble upon seeks to train its vic­tims in how to act like young adults by remind­ing them that ​“Today’s young peo­ple have a lan­guage all their own.” The lan­guage itself is over-the-top, and its ridicu­lous­ness is its own wink to media fear: ​“True dat! I’m up to sniznuff on all pop­u­lar trends.” The band Sug­ar Ray even makes a cameo per­for­mance, revealed to be brain­washed mon­sters in disguise. 

The ear­ly 2000s were a gold­en age for film and tele­vi­sion tar­get­ed at teens, and by cast­ing teen heart­throbs and fran­chise icons, Scoo­by-Doo plays direct­ly into the mass-media cul­ture of teen mags, tabloids and celebri­ty obses­sion with bla­tant self-aware­ness. Look­ing back, it’s a clear time cap­sule for a very spe­cif­ic time in pop cul­ture his­to­ry, which might explain its endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the cur­rent 90s/​00s renaissance. 

Some of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries include a 3D holo­graph­ic plas­tic cup fea­tur­ing the Scoo­by gang that we got from Block­buster dur­ing one of our many Sat­ur­day night trips, and as an Aus­tralian, no trip to Warn­er Broth­ers Movie World (a theme park in Queensland’s Gold Coast) was com­plete with­out going on the Scoo­by-Doo Spooky Coast­er at least three times. Scoo­by-Doo was my first brush with the trans-media fran­chise-mania that has come to define 21^st-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma. At the fore­front is James Gunn him­self, who con­tin­ues to use this brand of ref­er­en­tial humour, cheek­i­ness, and nos­tal­gia in his cur­rent slate of super­hero-themed mega-blockbusters.

Spooky, kooky, and Y2K-groovy, this sil­ly lit­tle movie about those darn med­dling kids and their talk­ing dog proves to have had a fin­ger on the pulse of the zeit­geist the entire time – ​“you know what I mean?” 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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