Scooby Goes Hollywood Review

Hey there Scooby fans it's time to review something that isn't related to Christmas in anyway and i think i've found the perfect thing and this special is also the first ever Scooby-Doo! special ever produced here is my review of Scooby Goes hollywood.

The plot of this special is Shaggy and Scooby leave there show in pursuit of fame and fortune and produce pilot films each starring Scooby. This movie is really freaking meta it's hard not to get sucked in and just have fun with it and it's refreshing that there really isn't a mystery to solve it's just Scooby and Shaggy going out on there own but the movie does loose points for Shaggy acting out of character.

Reprising there roles for the special are Don Messick as Scooby-Doo , Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers , Frank Welker as Fred Jones , Heather North Kenney as Daphne Blake and Pat Stevens as Velma Dinkley and they are joined by Rip Taylor. In all honesty the original cast kill it in this special Don and Casey especially since the film focuses on them the rest of the gang turn in good performances as well you can never go wrong with Frank Welker but for me it's Rip Taylor who let the cast down just because whenever he was on screen all i heard was Rip Taylor and not the character.

The animation in this special wasn't the best i've seen Hanna-Barbera do better animation then this but to be fair it wasn't the worst to come from the company either it just felt very bland it just felt like this was ordered by the network and not something that the team wanted to do so to get back at them they put little effort into the animation. This is Scooby-Doo so there has to be some form of effort put into it and there is a true passion for the characters in there but not as much as you'd see in an episode of the show.

Now this special does something that the show and the other movies didn't do and that's give us a look at how the gang met Scooby and it's something that i think is great because it gave an extra layer to the characters and it's something they actually did in the terrible live action prequel movies well the first one at least so it is cannon.

The comedy in this special for me was all over the place things that should have been funny weren't and things that weren't funny had a laugh track over it so people found them funny i will admit however that the parody films that Scooby does for me at least were pretty funny and since i'm a fan of Richard Donner's Superman i loved the parody of that movie the best even if the outfit he's wearing makes him look like Aquaman.

Unlike all other entries in the Scooby franchise this one is a full on musical and i have to say that some of cast can sing others not so much and i'm thankful they didn't give Rip Taylor a musical number but for me the best song was a song called "Scooby-Doo, We're Missing You" it's a great song and it's full on easter eggs like for example the song is done to the tune of the theme song to the new Scooby-Doo Movies and they use actual clips from the franchise.

Overall i;d say if your a Scooby fan then this is might be worth checking out since it was made to celebrate ten years of Scooby-Doo but if your not a fan of the franchise then this film/special won't make you one for me tho it gets a 6.5 out of 10.

  

Trolls Holiday Review

Yes i will pretty much review anything at this point and because it's early November ANOTHER Holiday themed special is out this time featuring the Trolls so here is my review of Trolls Holiday.

What is the plot of this special i here you ask well When Poppy queen of the Trolls figures out that the Bergens do not celebrate holidays she Branch and the other Trolls must get them into the spirit of the holiday. Yeah this special doesn't really call it self a christmas special but you can tell by the end that's what it is and the story is pretty much what you'd expect from a Trolls TV special.

The whole cast from the film reprise there roles for this special those being Anna Kendrick , Justin Timberlake , Zooey Deschanel and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. All of the actors that i've mentioned are pretty good in this special altho i have to admit i didn't know that Anna was back in this since poppy's voice sounded a bit different to me i only wish that the makes of this franchise would give the actors something more to do then say some mildly funny lines.

I think that the animation in this special an improvement over the animation from the film which i know is an odd thing to say considering both this and the film would have been in development at the same time but it's true everything in this special looks better then in the film. There's a great scene early on where they use mixture of animation techniques going from the traditional CGI animation to using puppet versions of the characters.

Now i will admit that this special got a few chuckles out of me and they mostly came from Poppy herself there's nothing really laugh out loud funny but there's another to at least get a smile or two the bad thing is the jokes aren't really that memorable chances are you'll here the joke but then forget about it within a few minuets.

Now this is a Trolls product so almost all of the songs are covers and i have to say that alot of them aren't that bad JT does a great version of Shaggy's Angel and there's a good upbeat version of "Love Train" but for me the only cover that isn't that good is "Holiday" it's the most obvious song to cover and it's not done well at all.

Overall this won't be the last we see of the Trolls as there will be a Trolls 2 and a netflix series called Trolls The beat Goes On out next year this special is the bogstanderd holiday special it does nothing new at all but it's a fun watch just a shame it was released in NOVEMBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it gets a 6 out of 10. 

Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The Battle for Mewni Review

Star fans season 3 has officially started and it's about time i got round to reviewing the movie that started season 3 so here is my review of The Battle For Mewni.

The basic plot of this movie is Star has to stop Toffee once and for all. That's really all the plot i could get out of it since the movie is basically the first several episodes of the third season and each episode has a different plot but the overarching plot is pretty good.

Of course all of the voice actors from the back (duh) and i have to say that they all did a really great job in this movie i personally thought that  Eden Sher was at her best in this episode she did a great job with all the funny lines and all the dramatic ones as well.

The show has always had some top notch animation but i feel that for this set of episodes the animation team went above and beyond the characters never looked this good and the movement was never this fluid i hope that the kind of animation was saw in this movie stays with us for the third season.

I'm just gonna come out and say it i love Star's new power if you can call it that it looks so freaking cool plus it wiped out Toffee in one single blast that right there makes it awesome and the overall build up to it i felt was pretty well done altho it was kinda obvious what was going to happen since there not going to kill of the main character when there just entering the third series.

Overall this was a good way to kick of the third season and i hope to god that disney get there act together and make a theatrically released Star movie since that would be epic and there's a huge fan base out there as well there will not a rating for this movie / batch of episodes / whatever you want ot call them.

Cartoon History: Scooby-Doo!

Well then Scooby fans it's time we take a look at a franchise everyone knows and loves and while it may have taken a few missteps it is still going strong and that franchise is Scooby-Doo!

The history of our favorite great dane is actually tied to the history of another show The Archie Show which featured the Archie characters as part of a band and it helped save the CBS Saturday morning lineup so Fred Silverman who worked for the network at the time contacted William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and asked them to pitch another show about a teenage rock group only this time the band would solve mysteries inbetween shows.

After attempting to develop his own version of what would become Scooby-Doo Where Are you which was going to be called House of Mystery Joe Barbera passed the project along to Joe Ruby and Ken Spears and also artist Iwao Takamoto and between them the trio changed the name of the show to Mysteries Five which was to feature characters called Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda, Linda's brother W.W. and their dog Too Much but tho after all there hard work the pitch was turned down by CBS.

Ruby and Spears went back to work on making a new pitch for the network now under the name Dobie Gills and with this new pitch came alot of changes "Mike" was dropped from the lineup while the rest of the cast got new names and personalities Geoff became Fred , Kelly became Daphne , Linda became Velma and W.W. became Shaggy Too much tho was the only character to be unchanged.

The new version of the show was pitched again and this time Fred Silverman liked the idea but not the name and so the show changed name again to Who's S-S-Scared? Silerman would go on to present the show to CBS executives CBS president Frank Stanton felt that the show was two scary for young kids and thus decided to pass on the show. Since the show was meant to be the centre piece of it's 1969-1970 line up Fred Silverman had Ruby, Spears, and the Hanna-Barbera staff revise pretty much everything they had done and that included toning down the spooky elements and highlighting the comedy aspects . It was during this time that the rock band element was dropped all together and more attention was given to Shaggy and Too Much and after many meetings changed the name of Too Much to Scooby-Doo! and it was this version of the show that got the green light from CBS.

Scooby-Doo Where Are You first premiered of Saturday September 13th 1969 with the episode "What a Night for a Knight" and it ran until 1975 but during 1972 there was another Scooby-Doo show also on the air at CBS The New Scooby-Doo Movies which were just forty minuet episodes with a different guest star every week which ran for 2 seasons totaling 24 episodes and with that Scoobys run on CBS would come to an end but the franchise would live on.

From 1976 until 1991 Scooby and the gang would find a new home on ABC thanks again to Fred Silverman and it's during this time we got shows like The Scooby-Doo Show , Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo twice , The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show , The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. As any fan will tell you it's during the Scrappy years that the show is at it's worse with the gang then mostly being just Shaggy , Scooby and Scrappy with everyone else just not being in the show at all until A Pup Named Scooby-Doo came on and dropped Scrappy and brought the original gang back together and for awhile this would be the last new Scooby-Doo! product.

The Scooby dry spell would end in 2002 when Warner Bros. released the first live action Scooby-Doo movie which was going to be much darker then the show i want go into two much details here because you can find it all on IMDB but it's a version that i wish they made but the film was such a big hit that a second live action movie was made just two years later and all of the cast came back for the sequel the less said about this film the better but it did give us a look at the future voice of Shaggy Matthew Lillard.

If it wasn't for the release of the 2002 movie then we wouldn't have gotten What's New Scooby-Doo which returned the character to Saturday mornings for the first time in seventeen years and along with this new series we got updated character designs and the use of technology was added to the series and this show proved that Scooby and the gang had alot of staying power as the new show would be on the year until 2006.

After that show had ended it was soon replaced by the dreadful Shaggy & Scooby-Doo get A Clue which once again saw the main characters get a redesign only this time it wasn't for the better and was the first Scooby-Doo series not to feature the late and great Casey Kasem as Shaggy with the role instead being played by Scott Menville also gone from the series cast were Fred , Velma and Daphne but it did maintain the Mystery Machine and it dropped the mystery aspect of the show all together so it was Scooby-Doo in name only luckily the show only ran for two years.

Two years would go by without a Scooby show but it was worth the wait because it 2010 we got Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated a show that did something other Scooby shows didn't do and that's give us a long running story and if a character died in an episode they stayed dead it was also the first series to feature Matthew Lillard as the voice of Shaggy. This series more then the rest focused more on the horror aspects with the ghosts sometimes being real and the characters actually had arc's this time around but three years later the show would end.

In 2015 a more comical take on the franchise would debut Be Cool Scooby-Doo! this time the mystery aspect was slightly toned down but not to much and the comedy became the main focus with one of the characters getting a personality change Daphne would now become the groups resident goofball often taking up weird and strange hobbies and as of this writing the show is still on the air.

As well as the two big screen live action Scooby films we got two made for TV movies called Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins and Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster and to be honest there pretty bad both serving as prequels to the 2002 movie and yet they contradict those movies and the less said about how Scooby looks the better.

Since the late 90's there's been a new direct to DVD Scooby-Doo movie almost every year with the first one being Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island which saw the teenagers get back together after a few years apart and the most recent film is called Lego Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash and next year will see the release of Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold which also happens to be the thirtieth film in the series.

Scooby-Doo is one of those franchises that will never go away there will always be someone trying to bring it back in some way shape or form and i for one am glad it's still around.  

   

   

Unikitty Premier Episode? Review

Well then guys when The Lego Movie came out i quickly became a fan and when The Lego Batman Movie came out i was even more of a fan and now Cartoon Network has made a TV series out of the character Unikitty and i'm going to let you all know right now my thoughts will be based on the premier episode alone so here we go.

The plot of this episode finds Unikitty , her brother Puppycorn , Hawkodile and Dr. Fox who are all friends getting trapped in a game and they have to complete the game in order to escape. That little character introduction i gave you is way more then what the episode gave us which makes me wonder if this was intended to air later in the series run but in terms of story it actually reminded me of the Jumanji cartoon.

This episode and the series stars Tara Strong who's replacing Alison Brie from The Lego Movie , Grey Griffin , Roger Craig Smith and the girl who's everywhere right now Kate Micucci. In all honesty the voice acting isn't that bad in this episode altho i think that Tara Strong modeled her voice after the voice of Pinkie Pie just because there are scenes where she sounds so much like Pinkie Pie. I can't really judge the acting until i've seen a handful of episodes but based of this episode and who's acting in it i'm going to say the acting will be the best thing in the show.

I'll admit that the jump from CGI to what i think is Flash animation is quite jarring at first but for me personally it took me maybe three maybe even four minuets to move past that but i have to say the animation in this episode only was just ok it's not anything to write home about but at the same time it's not as bad as say Teen Titans Go!. You can tell the animators and the show makers are trying to put out the best show they can.

However one of the things that i didn't like about this episode was the fact i laughed maybe two or three times which for this character isn't that good if anything the jokes they were trying to do felt like jokes that a five year old would find funny like for example a character falls over twice in slow motion and that's the joke to me that's not funny that's just showing that you can use slow motion and that's it.

The other thing that i hated about this episode was the fact that it goes against the continuity of The Lego Movie there's no mention of Unikitty being a master builder nore do they even reference that fact. In The Lego movie she doesn't mention having a brother or friends and yet here they both are in this episode.

Overall this episode was just ok and if i were to just base my opinions just of this episode and this episode alone i'd say that this show needs alot of work but you all know me i'm willing to give anything a chance and with that in mind i;m giving this episode a 5 out of 10.

  

Micheal Jackson's Halloween Review

Cartoon fans i'm here today to bring you a review of something i never knew was a thing until i went online this morning and yeah it's pretty bad so here is my review of Micheal Jackson's Halloween enjoy.

What is the plot of this CBS special i here well Vincent (Lucas Till) and Victoria (Kiersey Clemons) meet "accidentally" on Halloween night and find themselves along with Ichabod the dog at a mysterious hotel located at 777 Jackson Street called This Place Hotel. Once inside Vincent and Victoria are sent on an unexpected magical adventure of personal discovery culminating in a spectacular dance finale featuring an animated Michael Jackson.Yes this is really the plot of this special even reading it of IMDB and it still makes no sense the movie doesn't explain why Micheal is even there he just shows up the whole plot makes no sense at all.

The special features the voice talents of Micheal Jackson , Brad Garrett , Lucas Till , Kiersey Clemons , Lucy Liu , Jim Parsons , Alan Cumming and Diedrich Bader. The cast in this film do the best they can with what they have and that's truly the best thing i can say about the cast which is a shame because alot of these actors we all know can turn in a good performance.

For some reason this special thinks that because it's animated Bubbles the chimp can now talk i have nothing to say on the subject i just wanted to let you all know that Micheal's beloved chimp in real life can now talk thanks to this special make of it what you will.

I will give the film this however the animation for a TV special is pretty good i can't imagine the budget was that big to begin with so given the budget they had i'm shocked that the animation wasn't awful i was expecting it to be almost as bad as a certain Sony Pictures movie which came out this year which i shall never ever speak the name of.

All is not that good tho in the animation field tho since there are times where the main characters just look like plastic dolls and the same goes for Micheal himself which is a real shame because his name is in the title but i do have to say that Lucy Liu's character looks hot as hell.

I would very much like to comment on the music except all of the music was Micheal Jackson songs and not all of them make sense for some reason they use Smooth Criminal in the opening for no reason what so ever and for some reason reason the finale features our heroes dancing and singing to Thriller again for no reason what so ever.

Overall i'd say that if you really like Micheal Jackson then chances are you've already seen this special but for me this special gets a 5 out of 10.

Cartoon History: Looney Tunes

Cartoon fans there are so few cartoons that manage to transcend not only generations but ages and well one of those productions is the subject of this cartoon history and that is Looney Tunes.

The history of the Looney Tunes as also the history of Merrie Melodies the idea for Merrie Melodies comes from Looney Tunes producer Leon Schlesinger who had already made a Looney Tunes cartoon that was based on music and since that cartoon became hit Leon thought he would try to sell the series to Warner Bros. with his hook being the music featured would be from other Warner Bros. movies thus the cartoons would serve as advertisements Warner Bros. recordings and sheet music and the studio agreed and the new series was dubbed Merrie Melodies.

What people will be asking them selfs right now is "what separated a Looney Tunes short from a Merrie Melodies short?" well all of the Merrie Melodies were produced in color from day one since the studio saw those shorts as more profitable  while the Looney Tunes shorts were until 1942 produced in Black and White.

The first Looney Tunes star isn't Bugs , Daffy , Elmer or Porky it was a now defunct character called Bosko who was created by then Looney Tunes producers Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising with Leon Schlesinger acting as a producer but there relationship with Leon didn't last long as all three men had a falling out over the budget which ended with Harman and Ising leaving Warner Bros. and taking there only star with them but Leon soon found his next star.

His next star was a character called Buddy a character who was described by Bob Clampett as "Bosko In White Face" and just going of the picture above i can see why he would say that and the character had a troubled beginning with Warner Bros.who refused to accept his first two cartoons and even brought in Friz Freleng to re-edit and condense the cartoons into one short the character remained in the Looney Tunes gang until 1935 and has only made one modern appearance which was on an episode of Animaniacs.

Now you would think that the next star would be Porky well you'd be half right as the next star did infact star in a few cartoons with Porky his name was Beans The Cat but like the other two stars his fame didn't last long infact he only lasted one year until the new Looney Tunes star arrived and this time it's someone we all know.

Porky Pig and Beans The Cat actually debuted in the same cartoon I Haven't Got A Hat but as Beans popularity began to go away it turned out more people were liking Porky so Leon and i assume many directors helped make Porky the star of the Looney Tunes and out of all the other characters mentioned his popularity is still strong to this very day.

It's safe to say that Looney Tunes wouldn't be as popular as it is today with out great directors and one of the first truly great directors was Tex Avery and the first Looney Tunes short he made was a cartoon called Gold Diggers of '49 which was released in 1935 and had Porky Pig in a supporting role to Beans but this is one of many cartoons that helped make Porky Pig a star.

Jumping to the  year 1937 which saw the release of Porky's Duck Hunt and as well as having our favorite stuttering Pig the cartoon is historic in another vain because it also featured the debut of Daffy Duck and it's also the first time that Mel Blanc voiced Porky with his original voice actor Joe Dougherty was fired for not being able to control his stutter.

The Daffy seen in this cartoon is far removed from the Daffy we know and love in this short his way more Looney and over the top and in terms of design he's also a lot smaller gut for awhile this would be the version of Daffy that would grace cinema screens.

In 1940 we saw the debut of two more Looney Tunes members Elmer Fudd and that rebbit we all know and love Bugs Bunny with Elmer debuting in the Chuck Jones cartoon Elmer's Candid Camera

and Bugs debuting in the Tex Avery cartoon A Wild Hare both of which featured Elmer but what's interesting is that Bugs isn't called Bugs in A Wild Hare he wouldn't get his name until his next cartoon Elmer's Pet Rabbit which was directed by Chuck Jones.

Bugs wasn't at first part of the Looney Tunes series he was originally part of Merrie Melodies and it wasn't until 1944's Buckaroo Bugs that he officially joined the Looney crew and since then he's become the most popular cartoon character of all time.

During the 40's we had the debut of many of the Looney Tunes cast including Tweety , Sylvester , Yosemite Sam , Pepé Le Pew , Foghorn Leghorn , Marvin the Martian , Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner , Granny , Speedy Gonzales , Witch Hazel with the Tasmanian Devil debuting in 1954 and all of these characters were part of what now is called the golden age which was in the 60's and was when the characters were at there best.

Looking to give the characters more exposure out side of the cinema new producers David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng brought the characters to the small screen with The Bugs Bunny Show a show which would broadcast all of the shorts with some edits made and the show was so popular that it lasted for nearly forty years meaning that this show has lasted longer then The Simpsons.

The characters havn't just been featured in animated shorts or movies tho with there being eleven Looney Tunes movies and that's not Including Bugs Bunny Superstar or Who Framed Roger Rabbit even tho the first five movies were compilation films featuring the Looney Tunes shorts and they all had new animation done for them the first one being i think the best movie that being The Bugs Bunny / Road Runner Movie.

The Bugs Bunny Show tho isn't the only time that the characters have appeared on the small screen tho with the characters also starring in The Porky Pig Show , The Road Runner Show , Taz-mania , The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries , Baby Looney Tunes , Duck Dodgers , Loonatics Unleashed , The Looney Tunes Show , Wabbit and the cartoon special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and they even helped inspire the next generation of Looney Tunes with Tiny Toon Adventures and The Plucky Duck Show.

The Looney Tunes is a brand that's been around since the late 20's and it's still going strong regardless of what you think of the recent TV series you'll always get interested when you hear there's a new Looney Tunes show or movie is in production.