SCOOBY-DOO: THE MYSTERY BEGINS

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins is a nice surprise. It's the 3rd live action movie and rewinds to tell the origin story of the scooby gang... I liked the first movie and loved the second one but I was dubious about this prequel being a made-for-dvd release but all is good. Brian Levant is a trustworthy director when it comes to family films (Problem Child 2, Beethoven, Flintstones, Are We There Yet etc) and he delivers a faithful and highly entertaining Scooby movie. The actors all embrace their characters and the comedy is genuinely funny. It isn't restrained either and for a kid-friendly movie it's surprisingly spooky. The gang all meet one afternoon during a high school detention and inadvertently find themselves embroiled in a haunting. The famous scooby end-revelation is a good one too (and kind of clever) with the captured villain declaring he would have got away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. hehehe. Damn, now I'm keen to watch the 4th movie which continues from this one... when kids flicks work, they're rad! LOL

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