Scoob (2020) leaves us disappointed with dated jokes and too many Hanna-Barbera cameos

Scoob! left us disappointed. We landed on probably a two for the animated reboot, and our biggest complaint is that it was messy and "didn't feel like Scooby-Doo." It had some funny moments, but its attempts at modern humor fell flat, its Hanna-Barbera tie-ins felt unneeded, and splitting up the gang left no mystery.

Scoob! (2020) features Will Forte as Shaggy, Frank Welker as Scooby-Doo and Zac Efron as Fred. We picked it as a perfect movie for Halloween, and we were seeing it for the first time.

Scoob's childhood opening worked for us

We liked how this movie starts. Young Shaggy meeting a stray Scooby on the beach, with the name Scooby-Doo coming together almost by accident, worked for us. The kids busting a fake haunted house was fun, and the recreated cartoon intro was cool. "I would have been okay with a whole movie with them as kids." Later in the film, we felt the same way again: we liked it more when they were kids.

Scooby works, but Shaggy's new voice took getting used to

Scooby talks well in this movie, maybe a little too well, but we thought he was awesome and that what they did with him works. The jokes that land are the Scooby ones, like his line about not having pockets for a key. Shaggy was harder. We're so used to Matthew Lillard's voice because it's so specific, so we don't know if we love the new one as much.

Modern jokes in Scoob mostly miss

Some of these jokes are not good. They felt like attempts to talk like Gen Z, and they leaned into cringe rather than funny. The Tinder firewood gag and the Anonymous joke fell flat, and the name pun built on Dastardly's first name felt like a cheap joke some movies use. We felt the humor was so specific to the year it came out that it already felt dated.

Too many Hanna-Barbera references, and a Fred we did not recognize

The Hanna-Barbera material, from Blue Falcon to Dastardly from Wacky Races and Captain Caveman, works on its own, but it was a Scooby-Doo movie, and we were not convinced all of it was needed. Captain Caveman getting a full voice puzzled us, and bringing in Greek elements like Cerberus felt weird. Blue Falcon's son Brian struck us as the worst.

We also don't love that they made Fred dumb. That ties into something that drives us crazy in movies like this: every male character is an idiot while the girls are smarter than everyone else. Fred could be dumb sometimes, but he was also the leader, and he was smart and interesting.

Splitting up Mystery Inc. leaves Scoob without a mystery

The movie was missing the five of them together. Separating them meant there was no mystery. When the gang reunites, it's what we had been waiting for the entire movie. The big friendship ending was cute, but we questioned whether it was needed, and we did not like the new van design.

"It's just all over the place." We were hoping to enjoy Scoob! more, but it was not great.