Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map (2013) Reviews

• With the renewed interest in the Muppets at a fever pitch,there's no better time than now for "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map"

  ersinkdotcom2013-08-23

  Warner Bros. Home Entertainment recently released "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map" exclusively through Wal-Mart. Imagine the familiar characters from "Scooby-Doo" if they were turned into Muppets. The 45-minute mini-movie will thrill children and even parents who don't dig too deep below the surface. Scooby-Doo and the gang embark on a search for buried treasure when a map is accidentally left in their pizza. The lost treasure belongs to a pirate named Gnarlybeard. The quest gets difficult when the Phantom Parrot steals the map from the sleuths and their clue-sniffing canine. They must track down the mysterious bird and recover the map if they ever want to find out what's inside Gnarlybeard's treasure chest. "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map" is based in the world of "A Pup Named Scooby- Doo." To jog memories, the Saturday morning cartoon series featured Scooby and his pals as children. Remember back when every cool cartoon franchise was intent on turning their characters into pint-sized ankle biters? "The Flintstone Kids," "Tiny Toons Adventures," "The New Archies," and "Muppet Babies" are perfect examples of this obsession. If you don't get too picky, "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map" is entertaining. The sets and backgrounds all look good. It does seem like the filmmakers had a hard time figuring out exactly how to get the puppets properly framed in the picture at times. However, none of that really matters when your target market are children who aren't going to complain about those sorts of things. Most of the familiar voice actors who we've come to identify as these characters lend their talents to "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map." Frank Welker plays both Scooby-Doo and Fred as usual. Matthew Lillard breathes life into Shaggy and Grey DeLisle Griffin portrays Daphne. Mindy Cohn is replaced as the voice of Velma by Stephanie D'Abruzzo ("Sesame Street," "The Book of Pooh"). "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map" knows exactly who its target audience is and hits the mark. I can see where they could take the puppet concept of this movie and make it work as a new TV or movie series for the franchise. There's no better time than now to push the idea with the renewed interest in the Muppets at a fever pitch.

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• "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" is back, and in Puppet Form!

  wile_E20052013-07-30

  I really enjoyed this made-for-video production. As a longtime fan of "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo," I was a little nervous about it at first (because Warner Bros. Animation had screwed up before with "What's New, Scooby-Doo?", some of the made-for-video movies and "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!") but the movie had the charm of the 1988-1991 TV series, except it was done in puppets! You have Velma's same walk, Scooby turning into a rocket after eating Scooby snacks, goofy takes, the characters dancing to a rock song relating to the plot, and more. Though the Jim Henson Company/Muppet studio had no involvement, many Muppet performers including David Rudman, Matt Vogel, Eric Jacobson and Peter Linz all had a hand in performing the puppets, and they did a great job with it. For the most part, the puppets actually looked like characters right out of the show (except for Fred, Daphne and Shaggy having dots for eyes.) The puppet version of Young Velma reminded me quite a bit of Prairie Dawn from "Sesame Street" for some reason, and the evil parrot and Gnarlybeard puppet designs had "Classic Jim Henson monster" written all over them. Though there were a few things I did miss. Like the theme song and the show's groovy music, and the character Red Herring. Hopefully Warner will soon incorporate the latter into any future similar movies!

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• Scooby for kids

  Horst_In_Translation2017-06-18

  "Scooby-Doo! Adventures: The Mystery Map" is a 42-minute short film from 2013, so this one will have its 5th anniversary next year. Apparently, it is the only filmmaking credits by both writer Tosh E. Maab and director Jomac Noph. Basically this is Scooby Doo with string puppets, so this should give you a good enough idea already what to expect here. It is also basically two episodes in one, two episodes that are somewhat connected still as the gang runs into a spooky pirate and other more or less scary characters while they are on the search for a treasure. Or at least 3 of them are as Shaggy and Scooby are of course as always more busy eating and getting scared than doing anything else. Eventually, I enjoyed the watch here. They included a couple of nice references that were decent parallels to the old television show like Daphne's comments in particular. And they made the cases and puns in a way where they fit the target group for this little film (or these little films). I was not blown away by any of the action or contents or voice acting here, but still I enjoyed the watch overall. I believe they succeeded with what they were trying to achieve.

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