Sccoby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! (2023)

But as a fan of kid-friendly DC cartoons I was in Heaven. I loved the bit with Velma's glasses confusing Jimmy and Lois, and I love that Daphne claims when she and Jimmy wee crowned Mr and Mrs. Redhead, they were being bullied. Can you picture that girl being bullied? Neither can I. Which is why it's funny. I don't know TOO much about the Scooby canon, but it was fun seeing Fred jealous, and confirming they are actually together. What else?

I was surprised Batman didn't show up at the end. We saw Joker, Harley, and the Utility belt, I wonder why he didn't show up.

The parking valet J.B. was pretty funny.

I haven't enjoyed an animated Lex Luthor this much in ages. Hell, I haven't enjoyed a live-action one this much recently either. I love he's essentially a member of the Scooby gang for the movie.

So here's my deal and why it was broken. But as well as this movie did for DC fans is how dirty it did by Scooby Doo. And I am not a slavish Scooby fan. To be honest, the inherent stupidity of most of the franchise (and it's present here for the Scooby and Shaggy jokes) is something I will never appreciate. But I love that Stephen Hawking loved the show for providing scientific explanations for unexplained supernatural phenomena. To be clear, I don't ENIRELY agree with that praise, simply because the scientific explanations for that stuff is always drivel and bogus. But I dig the appeal of a cartoon that appealed to the rational, and taught kids to be skeptical of b.s. and parlor tricks. It gave kids a healthy mistrust of authority for that reason too. Scooby Doo was the stupidest cartoon on the air in the 1970's. But it also taught kids critical thinking skills which was its entire paradox. No wonder a scientist like Hawking was drawn to it.

When I saw the Mystery Machine being chased by Giganta and Solomon Grundy, I was like "If Hawking saw this, he'd get up out of his wheelchair and walk out in disgust." His voice-box would annunciate his rage with the same raw anger as Annie Wilkes in "Misery". There were supernatural elements to Scooby Doo Meets Batman: The Brave and the Bold too, but part of the gag of the mystery solve there is that Clayface defies explanation. The Mystery Inc Gang treating Zod and his Kryptonian followers as matter of course is just plain wrong.

Everybody I know who will watch this film will do so for the DC stuff, so they won't care. Neither will little kids. I guess I'm outraged on behalf of Hawking a little. And I kind of think I'm right to be. When you have a Phantom Zone projector and a cosmic treadmill in the Scooby franchise, you've kind of lost the plot there. 2 1/2 stars.