Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur is a solid entry into the long-running, enduring animated franchise. Obviously if you’ve one, you’ve basically seen them all, but for the most part this is a fun movie for the whole family with good humor, at least a half-decent mystery (even if you can see who the villain is 5 miles away) and fine voice talents.
Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur (2011)
REVIEW NAVIGATION
The Movie | Special Features | Video Quality | Audio Quality | Overall
Genre(s): Animated, Comedy, Mystery
Warner Bros. | NR – 75 min. – $24.98 | September 6, 2011
MOVIE INFO:
Directed by: Ethan Spaulding
Writer(s): Doug Langdale (written by)
Cast: Frank Welker, Mindy Cohn, Grey DeLisle, Matthew Lillard, Matthew Gray Gubler
DISC INFO:
Features: Featurette, DVD/Digital Copy Combo
Number of Discs: 2
Audio: English (DTS-HD MA 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Video: 1080p/Widescreen 1.78
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Region(s): A, B, C
THE MOVIE – 3.75/5
Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur marks the 100th animated movie of the timeless character and Mystery Inc. friends. Ok, probably not 100, but pretty damn close at this point for a series dating back to the 1960s and several incarnations since. I’ve said this before in other Scooby reviews, but I consider myself to be a moderate fan, enjoying the original series, a few of the TV movies from the 1990s but never quite getting into the spin-off or side series like “The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo” and, like most other “Scooby” fans, I had a hatred for Scrappy-Doo…
The latest made-for-TV animated movie (there are two made-for-TV live action films) finds Scooby and the Mystery Inc. gang taking what should be a relaxing vacation to a spa resort after Shaggy (voiced by MATTHEW LILLARD) is diagnosed with some sort of ailment where the doctor firmly recommends he must avoid anything that is scary, thus no more cases for the crew. Upon arriving to the small Southwestern town, things start off well enough but with an archeological dig going on nearby, you things won’t stay that way… And sure enough the town begins to be terrorized by a giant glowing dinosaur.
Through some groovy hypnosis by the retreat’s far-out owner, he hypnotizes Shaggy to be fearless anything the word “bad” is used, leading to the predictable, though often funny, hijinks after even he couldn’t remember the key word.
Can Scooby and the Mystery Inc. team find the perpetrator or perpetrators behind the scheme before it’s too late? Have you never seen anything involving “Scooby-Doo”?
Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur is a good entry into the long-running series with, once again, solid voice acting from veterans Frank Welker, Grey DeLisle and Mindy Cohn all reprising their roles as Fred/Scooby, Daphne and Velma respectively while relative newcomer Matthew Lillard returns as the voice of Shaggy (he also provides the voice on the “Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated” television series), a big plus to a moderate fan of the characters and a good replacement for the venerable Casey Kasem who retired a couple years back from doing the voice.
As far as the movie itself goes, it doesn’t break any new ground and quite frankly, I’m not sure it really needs to. We get some good inside jokes, some not-so-clever outside jokes and yet the fun chemistry that has made the series such a mainstay after all these years. So long as there are stories to tell, as half-assed as they might be, the more I look forward to each new TV movie (animated, not live action, thank you very much).
SPECIAL FEATURES – 1.25/5
All this set contains is Searching for Phantosaurs (13:34; HD) with actor Nick Palatas of the live action Scooby-Doo TV movies as he checks out the National History Museum of LA County. We also get the standard DVD/Digital Copy disc.
There are also promos for “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated”, Zoinks Points, “Thundercats” and “The Looney Tunes Show”.
VIDEO – 4.25/5
Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur schemes its way onto Blu-ray with a bright, colorful and all around clean 1080p HD transfer. The animation style isn’t a whole lot different from what we’ve seen before in the recent animated TV movies with clean lines and little to no flaws save for maybe some banding early on, though it was prevalent. Unlike the DVD, there were no signs of artifacting or pixilation so as a whole, it’s a fine transfer.
AUDIO – 4.0/5
The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio meanwhile might not be anything exceptional but it gets the job done. Dialogue levels were quite clear while the action scenes, for which there are a few, provide some depth to this lossless track.
OVERALL – 3.0/5
Overall, Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur is a solid entry into the long-running, enduring animated franchise. Obviously if you’ve one, you’ve basically seen them all, but for the most part this is a fun movie for the whole family with good humor, at least a half-decent mystery (even if you can see who the villain is 5 miles away) and fine voice talents.
The Movieman
Published: 10/03/2011