Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again; and welcome to week 3 of Scooby-Doo Month! For this week, we're getting a little extraterrestrial as we take a look at Scooby-Doo and The Alien Invaders!
On a ride through the desert, a UFO hovers over the Mystery Machine, throwing Scooby and the gang off and crashing the van against a cactus, causing it to break down and leaving the gang in a small town that's seen constant appearances by aliens; and yeah. That's the plot of the film. The gang do some investigating about these aliens; and along the way, they meet a crazy old guy named Lester.
I Love Lester in this movie, he's like the best part and there just isn't enough of him...
As I go through the Scooby movies that came out from 98-01, it's something to note that the films gradually become lighter, this one in particular is the lightest of the four to me. Alien Invaders was a movie that I very much enjoyed when I was younger but looking at it today, the concept of the movie was a tad...silly, even by the Standards of this franchise. Scooby-Doo has always been a series that's dealt with more supernatural elements such as monsters, magic, and ghosts which is why the previous two films worked so well. This movie on the other hand had Mystery Inc. dealing with Aliens; making the film feel a little more jarring to what's considered to be Scooby-Doo's bread and butter.
Let's get into the story and characters for a bit. The plot of the film is pretty much a by-the-numbers Scooby-Doo story: People in masks scare others away for a chance to get rich. There's no big twist
per say, no big "I want to take over the world" spiel, or no supernatural shenanigans; this film could in fact be an actual episode of "Scooby-Doo Where Are You?" and it'd fit right in with the series. If I were to make a guess, I would assume that with this film, the writers wanted to take things back to basics with Scooby and provide a more straightforward story, so to speak, which isn't a bad thing on their part, but on the other side of the coin, there's a chance that it won't leave an impression on you after viewing. Now with that said, they are indeed actual aliens in the film, but when they're backstory is given, you really stop and think that there wasn't any point of them being in the film. They COULDN'T have been aliens or even so, they could've been taken out of the film, and nothing would really impact the main plot of the story.
Since I talked about the main plot, let's get into the subplot of the film, which also heavily relies on these two characters: Crystal (The Woman with The Camera) and Amber (The Dog). This duo finds Shaggy and Scooby after their first encounter with the aliens of the film and when they meet the girls, Shaggy and Scooby immediately go gaga over them, thinking that their dream girls have been found. Once again, as I think about it, this little subplot really didn't do anything much for the main plot in the end. But the two characters did provide some fun as we got to see lovestruck Shaggy and Scooby. Not to mention it gave us this cheesy (yet also funny) song:
It's so corny, but I think that was the purpose: To be a corny 60's video
But in conclusion, compared to "Zombie Island" and "The Witch's Ghost" Scooby-Doo and The Alien Invaders is a weak film. The plot and villains are pretty generic by the standards of Scooby-Doo and there isn't much to remember other than the song I just posted above. It's not bad, but not something you have to see like the previous two films. I'd go out on a limb to say that this is the weakest of the direct to video films but there's still one more film to watch. So keep your eyes peeled folks, as next week, Scooby-Doo month concludes with Scooby-Doo and The Cyber Chase.
Till then, I'm The Shaman of Animation. Take Care...
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