TRICK OR TREAT, SCOOBY DOO (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

TRICK OR TREAT, SCOOBY DOO is so bad, it made me yearn for the sublimity of 2020's SCOOB. Whatever the various failings of that DTV flick, at least there were indications that the writers had some regard for the history of the Scooby franchise specifically and for Hanna-Barbera generally.

I have no idea how director/co-writer Audie Harrison finagled this assignment. His credit to fame thus far is that of writing and producing several episodes of the Cartoon Network show UNCLE GRANDPA, which I didn't care for but which did enjoy five seasons. But he and his co-writers were clearly out to "deconstruct" the Scooby Gang, and some dumdum in management let them indulge themselves.

The main plot follows a trope seen in early comic books: the Big Reveal that a bunch of completely separate villains actually share some common history: a mystery mastermind, or a supplier of weapons-- or, in this case, costumes. After many years in which Mystery Incorporated exposed dozens of monster masqueraders and put them in prison, Velma suddenly comes across enough clues to deduce a common maker of monster-costumes: the fiendish fashionista Coco Diablo. The Scoobies put her away as well, despite the way Velma forms a near-immediate crush on the imperious, glasses-wearing mastermind.

The Scoobies go through lean times now that there's no one to make monster-outfits for devious dastards. But then they're attacked by spectral beings that seem to be 19th-century parallels of all five Scoobies. Are they real monsters, or more phonies? The only way the mystery-loving teens can cope is to talk the warden of Coolsville Prison to parole Coco Diablo in order to help them solve the conundrum. But does Coco have her own agenda?

The answers to all these questions are uniformly boring, like the minor arcs of the characters. Daphne doesn't know what purpose she serves in the group. Fred's life is fundamentally empty if he can't trap monsters. Shaggy and Scooby just want to binge on Halloween candy. 

And then there's Velma. The lesbian do-over of her character is banal, but the script's one virtue of the script is that this schtick doesn't get built up into some vast endorsement of toxic feminism, as one can find in the Meretricious Cinematic Universe. So it's silly, but harmless. 

The animation and voice-work are OK, but nothing special. One odd aspect of TRICK is that the teens visit the Coolsville Prison a few times, which seems to be wholly occupied by all of their old foes, attired in orange jumpsuits. At the end of the flick, all of the villains get loose, but they don't get to re-assume their costumed identities-- which is the only thing that might have injected a small treat into this boring trick-show.