My memories of Scooby Doo are simple - vague. I do know that I have enjoyed them when I was young. Of course, most of those who grew up in the 70's and 80's either had seen or even enjoyed the two dimensional, cheaply made cartoon. Week after week, it was the same. The kids, Fred, Velma, Daphne and the lovable Shaggy and Scooby gets involved in one mystery after another, and proceeds to unmask the ghost who operate using pulleys, tackle, and other gimmicks plausible at that time. It never tired me then.

Recently I caught the series in the Cartoon Network (where it still [re]runs almost on daily basis) and found it to be a bore. Scooby and Shaggy are still fun. And of course, I forgot Scooby's nephew, Scrappy whom you might love and not. Okay, enough reminiscence. The point is, the show was dumb. It was fun, and it could still be fun thanks to Scoobs and Shaggy, but that's about it. So, what gave the Warners the guts to make it into a live-action version? God knows.

Did I enjoy this movie? Yes and no.

I hated the performance of Fred Prinze Jr as Fred and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne. I don't recognise Fred at all. And Daphne's up-to-dating by Geller doesn't look right. At the end of the movie, she does her Buffy butt-kicking stuff, that you get this feeling that she is merely impressing the legion of Buffy fans. What about Linda Cardellini, who plays Velma? Okay. She got the voice, the manners and definitely the boobs. Hey, I'm not getting cheeky here. It seems that's what the director wanted. While she initially walks around with turtle neck sweater, there is a dedicated few scenes with her in a low-cut version of that sweater, primely dedicated in exposing the highly visible cleavage. What can I say of performance? I leave it to the others.

The bad guy. Okay, there is the real bad guy, who happens to be the character I hated the most in the cartoon series. Otherwise, Rowan Atkinson plays purported bad guy, as most of us exposed to the trailer and scraps of news might know. I wish he wasn't involved. He had too much larger talent to fit in this no-brainer. True, most of us might recognise him as Mr. Bean, another no-brainer character. I just wish that he is also known for the brilliant Black Adder and the cop in Thin Blue Lines, two of the best products to come out of Britain's Sit-Com factory. Atkinson is without doubt the best British comic after John Cleese. Here, he is a nobody. What a waste.

Okay, the only good part of this movie - Shaggy and Scooby. It takes sometime to recognise the 3-D creature as Scooby Doo. Sometimes, the CG effect does not mesh well the film and you know that the real actors are talking to the thin air, but you will get over it. And I love Matthew Lillard's performance as Shaggy, which is on the dot. The last time something like this happened was the guy who played Jonah Jameson in the big screen Spider-man. Shaggy is Shaggy in this film, and you will love his rapport with Scooby. They are buddies alright. It is something you know but never emphasized in the cartoon, and you will be glad that they did in the movie.

Now, my complain is, who were you targeting Warners? The teen crowd? The nostalgic twenty and thirty somethings, like us? The smaller kids who had never seen the cartoon? I got the feeling that they got greedy and made sure that it appealed everyone. So, whether you like it or not, you will, like me, come out feeling disgusted with certain scenes. I am not sure this is right, but to me, the disgust is more than the delight.

I am not sure I will enjoy this movie again, and I am sure that it will be dated even before it hits the video market. The special effects are pretty bad. It seems that we are moving away further these days from the excellent CG effects we first saw in Jurassic Park. I don't know why this is happening. I blame the director for it.