This was actually a pretty interesting movie. This was the last movie Joseph Barbera worked on, and it is thankfully the last one Sander Schwartz worked on. He was the one that ruined Scooby-Doo in 2002, and again in 2006. However, I'm quite happy to say that I liked this one. The "Pirates Ahoy" one was pretty good, despite being merely to cash into the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trend. When I first heard of this, I figured it was going to be another Snow Ghost/Creature/Demon terrorizing a ski lodge or something similar. But instead it has this mystical Indian thing about the snow monster, which is pretty unusual for the franchise. Also, Shaggy is thankfully voiced by Casey Kasem in this one instead of that Scott Menville like on "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!" But Frank Welker probably needs to practice voicing Scooby; he still makes him sound like Brain, the "Inspector Gadget" dog he voiced (now we need Cree "Penny" Summer as Velma and we'd be all set!) One thing that made this rather interesting was that it focused more on Shaggy and Scooby-Doo than the rest of the gang! It could be because of the "Get a Clue" series, though the animation is not done in that crude Flash style but in the "What's New Scooby-Doo" style used for the 2004-present made-for-video movies. It was pretty funny seeing Shaggy as a DJ (Casey Kasem is well-known for being a DJ actually!) The sound effects factor, they only used the classic H-B sound effects for exaggerated comedy sequences with Scooby and Shaggy. This is ironic, because when Warner Bros. Animation made the Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse cartoons back in 1967 to 1969, they relied on using the Hanna-Barbera sound effects a lot, even the same ones over and over! There weren't any thunderstorms here, so Castle Thunder wasn't used, let alone other storm SFX. Fred was still acting rather clueless like in "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" (I thought he was going to blame Red Herring on being the monster!) and it was nice to see his ascot at one part. I also enjoyed Daphne's complaining about going on another mystery. This also might be the last movie to use a Hanna-Barbera logo at the end, which will be good because H-B wasn't involved in producing the movie; Warner Bros. Animation did all the work. It's just as odd as seeing an H-B logo at the end of a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon! Because I saw this on Cartoon Network, the credits were too small and I couldn't tell if there was a Joe Barbera dedication, but it did dedicate the movie to Iwao Takamoto (the guy that designed the Scooby gang). It would've been nice to see a little animated bumper dedicating the movie to Joe Barbera before the H-B and WB closing logos, like on "Zombie Island" (they had Scooby feed some cats that he fought with earlier and dedicated it to Don Messick). However, I recommend this, especially if you want to see something different than "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!"
Review of Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
(2007 Video)
At last, Sander Schwartz's last Scooby-Doo movie
13 September 2007