Scooby fans Comic-Con starts next week and Scooby-Doo is going to have some sort of presence that weekend. So I thought i'd take a look at the only film that features a set up similar to Comic-Con except it doesn't feature comic book heroes but features a group of teenage crime solvers and there talking do. This is one of the many Scooby-Doo films i've not even seen so I was going into this film pretty blind so here is my review of Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon.
The plot of the movie is Shaggy and Scooby convince the gang to go to a Comic-Con type convention where they meet the original Blue Falcon actor Owen Garrison but all is not what it seems as there's someone attacking the convention and so it's up to our gang of heroes to solve the mystery. As a comic book fan I found the story in this film to be really good i've never seen the franchise essentially tell a superhero story before so I was shocked at how refreshing it really was and how well told the story was as well.
In this film the scooby regulars are voiced by Matthew Lillard as Shaggy Rogers , Frank Welker as Scooby-Doo, Fred Jones and Dynomutt , Mindy Cohn as Velma Dinkley and Grey Griffin as Daphne Blake. They are joined by Diedrich Bader as Brad Adams/Blue Falcon II , Dee Bradley Baker as Hideous Hyde Hound , Jeff Bennett as Owen Garrison/Blue Falcon , Gregg Berger as Hank Prince , John DiMaggio as Mr. Hyde , Nika Futterman as Jennifer Severin , Kevin Michael Richardson as Mayor Ron Starlin , Tara Strong as Austin , Fred Tatasciore as Jack Rabble and Dynomutt II and Billy West as James Becker.
The acting in the film wasn't that bad but I think that's more due to the quality of the actors involved with the film rather then the quality of the film's script. That's not to say that the script is bad far from it but when you see actors such as Tara Strong and Frank Welker then you know that they are going to deliver great performances and here the same is true for the whole cast both regular and guest and that's not something I get to say often.
The animation for the film is done by Digital Emation who also do the animation for OK KO and I have to say that the animation is honestly pretty good. It's not as good as I thought it would be but it's also not as bad as it perhaps could have been but the characters have these really thick lines which at times do get rather frustrating but the overall quality of the animation is that of a high quality and that for me is always a good thing.
As a movie which is technically a crossover movie I thought that how they did the crossover was really fresh and clever. It would have been so easy to have Blue Falcon and Dynomutt be actual people but to have them be characters to me was a smart and clever idea and it's one that I wish that more Scooby-Doo crossover movies would do but for some reason none of them ever do it and I have no idea why that's the case.
When I said that this version of Comic-con doesn't feature comic book heroes that's because there are cameos from other Hanna-Barbera productions. They don't just stick to popular HB shows either Frankenstein Jr. from Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles makes a few appearances it honestly makes watching the scenes set at the convention alot more fun to watch because you never know who's going to appear and a word of advice keep an eye out on the posters because there's a lot more references there as well.
I was honestly shocked at how many references there actually is in this movie even in the above picture I just spotted a Wacky Races references and that was something that I never noticed in the original movie. I don't want to keep on banging on about this because there are other things to talk about but just the fact that they made so many references to other and some times little known HB productions is such a cool thing.
What I wasn't expecting was a nod to a classic Spider-Man story called Spider_Man No More in which Peter Parker gives up being Spider-Man. To be honest I really wasn't expecting any kind of super hero reference at all but the fact that the makers of the film went to the length of referencing what is perhaps one of the most famous Spider-Man scenes is something that is both truly shocking and awesome at the same time.
In terms of what I thought about the actual mystery and in my opinion the mystery in the film is actually pretty good. It's not great by any means since we don't see the gang collect any clues and there is a time in the third act where we the audience get ahead of the gang which should never be the case but for the most part it is a fun mystery and the reveal is someone that you might not see coming which for a mystery is always a good thing.
Overall the best word I can use to describe the movie is fun it's a fun movie in every sense of the word be it from seeing Shaggy , Scooby and Daphne geek out over things from the over the top third act it's just to watch but it's not a perfect movie and so it gets a 7 out of 10 from me.