Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again! Well: This is awkward, this review was meant to be up a week ago. Other than being a lazy bum, the last week I let stuff pile up and I had to take care of that. Excuses aside, welcome folks to the final week of Scooby-Doo Month! In the month of October, we've taken a look at, in my opinion, the best movies in the long history of the Great Dane, and today we're going to cap the month off with Scooby-Doo and The Cyber Chase!
Scooby-Doo and The Cyber Chase sees Mystery Inc. visiting their friend Eric, who has created a video game based on them and has entered it into the science fair. But they discover that their friend had been attacked but a "Phantom Virus". The gang try to track down the phantom but are soon zapped into Cyber Space in Eric's Game and now they must beat Eric's game and get back to the real world; and because random references are ALWAYS hilarious, I must play this now...
If you didn't click away after this poor attempt at humor, you're in for the long haul...
I'll be honest here, this film in particular is a little tough to talk about, so I'll start with some of the production stuff. This movie was the last Scooby-Doo movie to be animated by Mook Animation. Mook animation is an animation studio in Japan; they've worked on all the Scooby movies I've talked about in October along with other Hanna-Barbera cartoons. It also marks the debut of Grey Delisle as Daphne; she would later on become the mainstay voice for Daphne, reprising the role in future Scooby Series and Movies.
Because the gang are travelling through the different levels of Eric's game, you get to see plenty of different environments in the film: Space, underwater, Ancient Rome, there's plenty of visual variety here in this film. This movie also manages to put in some pretty cool fanservice for Scooby fans as we not only get to see old school Scooby-Doo villains, but we also get to see The Gang in their classic costumes, Shaggy and Scooby appear in their 80's wardrobes from series such as "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" and the movies from that time. And of course, this film, much like the last three has its own interpretation of The Scooby-Doo Where Are You theme song.
Now obviously, with positives in the movie, I felt that there were some things wrong with it as well. I personally felt that there was a little bit of padding in the film, especially near the last third of the movie; let's address the villain of the movie, The Phantom Virus.
I thought the Phantom Virus was a fun little villain: He looked cool (At least in my opinion he does), he's very charismatic when he's on screen, but there are some things in the story involving the character that makes me scratch my head. For example, the virus could be harmed by magnets. Now, the movie explained this by saying that the virus was made of bio-magnetism or bio-electricity, or something along those lines. Now, I'm no science expert, nor will I ever be; but, even with the explanation the movie gives, is it really possible for a magnet to affect what's essentially a bunch of data?
Second, when it's revealed who is was that created the Virus you can't help but think that the creator is a bit of an idiot for giving away very obvious clues as to him creating the virus, and even then with an artificial intelligence like the Phantom Virus, the motives of the creator wouldn't really...exist.
But in the end, Scooby-Doo and The Cyber Chase is a fun little adventure with the gang...if you ignore the problems I listed up above. Once again, it isn't a film that you have to rush out to see, but for what it is, you won't feel like you've wasted time.
And that folks brings an end to Scooby-Doo Month! I'd like to thank you guys who stuck with the blog this month and looked at all things Scooby with me! Hopefully next year, I can actually get all the Scooby reviews done in the month of October and have nothing spill over into November, but with me, nothing's ever guaranteed.
Till next time Folks, I'm the Shaman of Animation!
Take Care...
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