Grade: C

Verdict: As Scooby would say, Rust Rokay.

Details: Starring Matthew Lillard, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. Directed by Raja Gosnell. Rated PG for some scary stuff and gross-out humor. One hour, 26 minutes.

See it: Theaters and showtimes for Scooby-Doo

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Based on the popular cartoon series that first aired on CBS in 1969 and has been running somewhere or other ever since, “Scooby-Doo” the movie is a very expensive (reportedly $90 million) live-action version of, well, pretty much the same thing that's been recycled on cable ever since they stopped making the original episodes.

If you're unfamiliar with the Scooby mythos, not to worry. It's not very complicated, and the movie spells out the particulars in the opening scene. Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is a preening blockhead. Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a color-coordinated airhead. Velma (Linda Cardellini) is a brain. (You can tell cause she wears glasses.) Scooby is an animated Great Dane whose way of speaking people-talk is to start everything with an R (as in, “Ret's Ro!”). He and his best pal Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) share a fondness for food and for running away when danger threatens.

The gang is summoned to Spooky Island, a popular Spring Break destination, by the park's owner (Rowan Atkinson, who's starting to look like a collision between Dudley Moore and Don Knotts). Some scary things not on the theme park's agenda are happening and Mystery Inc. (as our crowd is called) must find out what's going on before all the vacationers are turned into zombies. Or something like that.

Prinze is more palatable than he's ever been before on the big screen, but that's not really a recommendation. Nor is saying that Gellar is, as always, a lot of fun to watch.

The movie's scene-stealer is Lillard, who does a remarkable job of capturing his cartoon counterpart's loose-limbed, slightly zonked manner. It's through Lillard that the filmmakers slip in the pot jokes that permeated the original series. Example: a mysterious smoke wafting from Shaggy's trailer and the words, "Talk about being toasted,” turn out to be some burning eggplant burgers he and Scooby are sharing for breakfast.

As for the computer-generated Scooby, he's just plain spooky. Really spooky.

“Scooby- Doo” is reasonably kid-friendly and it's an improvement on animation-gone-live-action misfires like “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.” But now that “Spy Kids” has shown us what a little passion and imagination can do for a kids' movie, “Scooby-Doo” comes off as a harmless but limp vehicle for a lot of product tie-ins.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution