Scooby and the gang spring into action when menacing doppelgänger ghosts threaten to ruin Halloween for everyone.
Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, Scooby-Doo was a big part of my childhood. Every week a new episode focused on the big cowardly talking Great Dane and his human counterparts, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and his best friend, Shaggy, as they solved supernatural mysteries, mainly through miscalculations and comical shenanigans.
The original TV series, “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!,” ran from 1969 to 1976, and over the years, there have been countless iterations, including two live-action films starring Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, and Linda Cardellini as Velma. In “Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!,” Matthew Lillard returns as the voice of Shaggy, and the movie is all the better because of it.
This time around, our hapless gang, or Mystery Inc. as they are professionally known, are summoned to the small town of Coolsville, where they help capture Coco Diablo, a high-priced Halloween costume designer who, it turns out, designed the ghostly costumes for all of the gang’s previous mysteries and they learn that the villains from those episodes are behind bars in the town’s jail. Once Coco is in jail, everything settles down, and for an entire year, Mystery Inc. grows increasingly depressed because of a lack of complex mysteries.
When five doppelgänger ghosts resembling our protagonists appear and begin haunting the town, it quickly dawns on Mystery Inc. that someone is working the ghosts from behind the scenes, and when they ask Warden Collins, a big fan of theirs, to release Coco temporarily into their care to help them with their case, he agrees. After being chased around town, Coco manages to give them the slip, and they end up tracking her back to her factory, convinced she is the criminal mastermind, but that’s where things get interesting!
The film follows in the footsteps of the original show and the various adaptations that followed. Matthew Lillard is the highlight of the film; he has Shaggy’s vocal characteristics fully mastered, and he should have a contract with Warner Bros. stating that he will be the only actor allowed to ever voice Shaggy. Naturally, this old-fashioned cartoon won’t appeal to all ages as many of today’s kids didn’t grow up with it, but those who enjoy Scooby-Doo will have a blast.
Now available on DVD and Digital HD
