Imagine my surprise when, about halfway through the movie, I did a double-take and realized that I was really, genuinely enjoying myself. I consider that no mean feat, friends, and have to thank the makers of this film for giving me a Scooby flick worth seeing.

Most people are familiar with the basic story, whether you watched the cartoon or not. Four teenage sleuths...manly Fred, shapely Daphne, brainy Velma and cowardly beatnik Shaggy...tool around from town to town in their van, aptly named the Mystery Machine, with their talking great dane Scooby-Doo, solving mysteries and ghost-breaking wherever they end up. This mostly involves them running across a haunting or a monster infestation of some sort that inevitably turns out to be a creepy local in a mask, trying to scare people away from whatever illicit scheme s/he had on the go. Hard work to find, I would imagine, but I guess it pays to specialize.

The movie begins with just one such adventure, the gang solving the mystery with typical combination of plotting, bungling, and sheer dumb luck. But as we soon see, tensions are running high in the group after their years of rather predictable crimefighting. Velma (the wonderful Linda Cardellini of tv's FREAKS AND GEEKS)is fed up with being underappreciated and having the increasingly egomaniacal Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr, oddly less annoying than I had expected) take credit for her plans. Daphne (Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar, the only relative disappointment in the cast) is tired with her constant captures at the hands of whatever fiend they're chasing. And Scooby and Shaggy....well, they're happy as clams, thanks very much. Scooby here is a CGI creation, who works well more often than not. Shaggy is portrayed with eerie perfection by Matthew Lillard, who easily steals the movie

But the good times can't last, and after an argument the group goes their seperate ways until we pick up with them two years later. A mysterious amusement park owner (Rowan Atkinson in a competently creepy/goofy performance) reassembles the gang on his resort, Spooky Island, to solve a mystery involving what appear to be hordes of brainwashed college students. Personally, I didn't realize there was any other kind, but whatever.

At first working seperately, the gang soon enough gets back together (an ironic reversal of their usual mode of investigation) as they start to realize that whatever is happening on Spooky Island may, to their dismay, be genuinely supernatural.

There were any number of ways this movie could have gone horribly, horribly wrong, but it manages to avoid those routes. Some older fans may be disheartened to find that this is being marketed as a family movie, ruining some dreams of finally seeing a pot-smoking Shaggy or a lesbian Velma. Amazingly, I actually have read negative reviews for Scooby-Doo that cite just that as the downfall of the flick. One local paper went so far as to complain that there were only two stoner jokes in the whole movie. Ah yes, because if they had piled another dozen or so on then perhaps we could have elevated this picture to the level of, say, DUDE WHERE'S MY CAR?

There is a small amount of potty humour in the movie, which I'm usually against...lowest common denominator jokes aren't my bag. But oddly, the infamous farting and burping contest scene between Scooby and Shaggy actually works. After all, isn't that EXACTLY the sort of thing these two goofballs would get up to, if they thought they were alone?

I criticized Gellar above, which may not be realy fair. The fact is, she and Prinze have the least to do (odd, as they were the biggest stars going in) bacause Fred and Daphne were always little more than eye-candy in the group. Shaggy was the heart, along with Scooby, and Velma was the brains. The movie tries it's best to give the others something to do, half-succeeding. I will geekily admit to feeling a charge when Daphne and Fred started kicking some ass later on in the story.

The real surprise here is Lillard, who does what I would have thought impossible...takes one of the most two-dimensional characters in cartoon history and, not only renders him with dead-on accuracy, but takes him a step further and makes him seem like an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING. Shaggy in this movie seems like someone you'd really want to hang out with, as long as you didn't let him cook. After seeing Lillard in this movie, I'm going to run and hunt down some of his other movies. I'm impressed.

Same goes for Linda Cardellini, if only to a slightly lesser extent. Her Velma is always a delight, not to mention almost disturbingly gorgeous. Especially in the one instance in which she trades in her trademark orange sweater...Velma, my dear, you should wear v-necks more often. Rrrowr. And there are other successes as well. The set pieces comprising Spooky Island make me wish it were somewhere I could actually GO on vacation. And you gotta love ANY movie that pits Sarah Michelle Gellar against a masked mexican wrestler.

So there you have it...Scooby-Doo, and it works. And it's fun. I'm delighted that this one made enough cash to merit a sequel, and hopefully they won't mess up a good thing. My sole request is to see some of the villains from the series in the nest one. If they can give me a real, live funland robot or creeper..? Brother, pass the Scooby Snacks and lock me in the theatre. Zoinks, y'all.

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