Scooby-Doo! Aventures en Transylvanie

I've always been a fan of Scooby-Doo. I know a lot of people prefer when the series goes dark, meta or more mature (like Zombie Island or Mystery Inc), but I always preferred the more light-hearted adventures in colorful locations, and this film hits those hit all the high points for me.

First of all, the editing and humor in this film hit me by surprise. A ton of blink-and-you'll miss it moments, and some of the gags had me in stitches. I love how the film kept building on the gags and jokes without making them stale (something future films picked up on, but didn't do as much as this one). The film also had a ton of lightning fast edit scenes which I enjoyed but felt they were a bit out of place. Overall, the film is a lot more gag-based than some Scooby-Doo films but still manages to have a fairly foreboding atmosphere. The animation was also really cool. It felt a bit cheap in places, using fairly low-quality CGI for backgrounds, but it set the moon and looked really good all-throughout. A ton better than the lackluster looking 2000s films. I didn't like the animation as good as the anime-styled 90s films, but it's different and still really nice. What also took me by surprise was the sheer villainy of the bad guys. Scooby-Doo villains have rarely ever been as bloodthirsty as these guys, who attempted to straight up murder Mystery Inc in various ways. It was kind of cool in a twisted way. The villains didn't just feel like a mystery for the gang to solve, but legitimate threats that the gang needed to put to justice. Overall, the gang felt a lot more heroic in this film, since they weren't just solving a mystery but liberating a small town from a bunch of maniacs who took over. The characterization of the characters were also a real treat. The film carried the fairly new tradition of making Fred into more of a technically-minded dork (like Velma but more engineering than science) with a very animated personality. This has its strengths and weaknesses of course. On one hand, it makes Freddy a lot more interesting of a character with his own inner-personal demons to overthrow in his character arc, but it also takes away some of the credibility he had as a leader. Daphne instead becomes more of the straight-man type figure this time around. Though still vain and fashion-centric, she's much more down-to-earth than anyone else in Mystery Inc. Everyone else is more-or-less how you'd expect, which is always a treat. To sum things up, this film was an utter treat. I loved the beginning, middle and end of it. It might even be my favorite Scooby-Doo movie yet.

Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy (2014)

** (out of 4)

Incredibly disappointing feature has Velma inheriting her great-great-uncles castle in Transylvania, which has a curse on it. As soon as the gang heads off to see it, the Mystery Machine is blown to pieces by a strange phantom wearing a mask. Once in Transylvania it's clear that someone wants revenge on Velma and the gang.

After the slightly disappointing WRESTLEMANIAC MYSTERY, this latest feature is without question one of the worst. That's not to say that the film isn't worth viewing for fans of the series but there's no question that the film offers very little in regards to entertainment. I will say that there are a few good ideas scattered around but sadly none of them add up to very much and in the end I couldn't help but keep looking at my watch wondering when the film was going to be over.

The film tries to do a few new things but I just didn't find anything of them overly interesting. One of the new things was to have the characters all appear in a different form. Shaggy and Scooby turned into brave creatures who don't like to eat. Fred was a whining cry-baby throughout the picture. Daphne turned into an obese woman with awful hair. Then there's Velma who turned into a sexy boss. You'd think some of these changes would be fun but I thought the screenplay was so bland that this stuff was more annoying than anything else. In fact, I'd say this is the absolute worse I've ever seen the Fred character.

The biggest sin committed by this movie is the fact that it's simply deadly boring. I don't think I'm going to call this the worst thing to deal with Scooby-Doo but there's no question that there's no energy, no passion and there's just nothing working with this thing. The film adds some footage from the original television show and there's a nice twist at the very end but it's really too bad these weren't used for a better purpose. I won't spoil the ending but it was a clever little idea that should have been used in a much better picture.

If you enjoy the Scooby Doo cartoons, then you will also enjoy "Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy", as this is a fairly average run-of-the-mill typical Scooby Doo cartoon and story.

The friends venture to a small village named Transylvania in Pennsylvania, where Velma has inherited a cursed castle. And it is up to the friends to figure out what is going on in the cursed castle and the nearby spooky village.

Again, this 2014 cartoon follow the exact same method of building up a story as every other episode and movie of the Scooby Doo stories.

Kids will enjoy this cartoon.

Scooby and the gang come across the legend of the Frankenstein Monster, this movie has a nice story interconnected with Velma's ancestors, she being a descendant of them but as the story progresses the gang find it very hard to outsmart this mystery because it was mainly an undercover scheme by some of the famous classical Scooby villians half a century ago, now coming back to take out the gang based on redemption, vengeance and revenge. Like Shaggy said in the end: you got so greedy for revenge that you forgot to be greedy for money as they also had a plan to usurp the money of the estate where they had invited the gang . A very nice movie.

Things happen. No reason, and definitely entire cuts are missing at places. It is contrived, it is boring, it is nonsense. This thing is so convoluted, it requires 10 minutes of final exposition to hammer some illogical sense into it.

Top 10 Worst Scooby Doo movies until its year.