Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur

Note: This review contains spoilers for Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur.

On this blog, we’ve covered films that we watched for their reputation, either good or bad. However, we haven’t covered many where just a specific iconic scene drew us in. Such is the case with 2011’s Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur, the 16th installment of the long-running series of direct-to-video Scooby-Doo! films. While this one scene in particular, which I’ll go into later, was worth watching, the rest of the film felt very uneven.

A scary experience in a haunted mansion has led to Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) screaming nonstop for several hours. In a hospital, the doctor advises that Shaggy, as a result of his experience, shouldn’t ride in the Mystery Machine or do anything even remotely scary. To help Shaggy, Mystery, Inc. travel to a remote town in New Mexico to stay at the La Serena Spa, where Shaggy can relax with Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) while everyone else can check out a paleontological dig occurring at the same site. During their stay, however, a ghostly creature known as the Phantosaur begins its attack.

The Phantosaur shows itself for the first time.

Its easy to follow the story and it makes sense within its own internal logic. However, it does stretch the willing suspension of disbelief by the end, specifically when the villains explain how they pulled off the illusion of the Phantosaur, especially its fire breath. They explain the fire breath away as paint-strippers that they planted all over town, but you’d have to wonder how no one would’ve noticed them, considering their size. Then there’s the fact that there are actually two sets of villains, both of whom use the Phantosaur to scare people away for completely different reasons. The first time is set up in a somewhat comedic way, as their motive matches Fred’s (Frank Welker) prediction about the mystery, and is used to comment on how quickly they solved the case.

Of course, the movie in general has a pretty comedic tone. The jokes are used pretty conservatively, but they take the opportunity to exaggerate certain scenes for comedic effect and include a running gag about how Mr. Hubly (Fred Willard), who runs the spa, can’t get anyone’s name right. Some jokes land, like how Shaggy only stops screaming when a doctor tells him to, but others aren’t as clever, like a self-aware GPS voiced by John DiMaggio or having Scooby bury a bone he discovered that contributed to science. This tone also carries into the final joke of the film, one that makes it obvious they had no idea how to properly wrap things up.

By contrast, there were some ideas I liked. One was the introduction of a proper love interest for Velma (Mindy Cohn), Winsor (Matthew Gray Gubler). The two of them have a lot in common and seem to have good chemistry, so it would be interesting if they actually brought him back somewhere down the line. Of course, by the nature of these films, I wouldn’t be surprised if he never came back.

Winsor (Matthew Gray Gubler) is a good addition to the film.

Perhaps the most interesting idea is that of Brave Shaggy, a state of mind Shaggy goes into when he hears a code word. This is used for comedic effect at least a couple times, but its overall executed pretty well and leads to a good message by the end about how there’s bravery inside you, you just have to call it out. The only things I didn’t like about Brave Shaggy were actually events that occurred around it. More specifically, the groan-inducing running gag about how no one could figure out the code word, “Bad”, until the very end of the film and how Brave Shaggy merely thinking the word “Bad” instead of hearing it was enough to dispel it.

Brave Shaggy, however, does lead into the one reason we watched this film, the now famous scene where Shaggy single-handedly takes down a biker gang in a diner. This scene is genuinely exciting and provides one of the bigger sources of action in the film. What it’s best known for now, however, is the meme that spawned from it, Ultra Instinct Shaggy. Due to Shaggy’s feat, he’s been depicted as having the Ultra Instinct form from Dragon Ball Super and, later, capable of defeating other powerful fictional characters with only a fraction of his power. The popularity of the meme actually got to the point where the marketing for Scoob! acknowledged it. That said, while I do like the meme, the scene itself is genuinely fun, even outside of the Ultra Instinct context.

Official acknowledgement of Ultra Instinct Shaggy by the marketing for Scoob!

The animation itself is pretty good, though it does have a generally bright color palette to go along with the more cartoony animation brought on by the more light-hearted tone. This leads to moments like Scooby-Doo reacting to caffeine and running around very quickly while under its influence. In spite of the animation quality, however, there is a scene at the very beginning that uses very obvious motion tweens on a closet to illustrate how Shaggy is terrified while hiding inside.

The voice acting is also generally good, especially from returning Scooby-Doo! voice actors Frank Welker, Grey DeLisle and Matthew Lillard. I also like Mindy Cohn’s take on Velma, which fits in well with her character. By contrast, the music, particularly the two obligatory songs, don’t really stick past the initial viewing.

Legend of the Phantosaur isn’t a bad film, but between the hit-and-miss comedy and gaps in logic, its execution is pretty uneven. This isn’t a bad Scooby-Doo! film to watch, but I wouldn’t blame you if you only wanted to watch it to see Shaggy beating up a biker gang. That, in itself, is a pretty good reason to give this a watch.