How can people ever make movies as bad as this? I like the cartoon series but this is a movie too vulgar and scary for anyone below an age where they wouldn’t consider this too dumb. “Scooby-Doo” is an embarrassing attempt at bringing the franchise to the big screen.

Scooby-Doo (voiced by Neil Fanning) and the rest of the ‘Mystery Gang’ have reunited after a few years of being separated. Now, they need to solve a mystery where a tropical island may well be cursed. Through various ridiculous antics the Mystery Gang must thwart this evil.

The acting in this film is awful. Freddie Prinze Jr. (“Wing Commander”) stars as Fred and he’s just so wooden that you could mistake him for a tree. Sarah Michelle Gellar (“The Grudge”) stars as the girly Daphne and sadly, she probably gives the best performance of the film. Matthew Lillard (“She’s All That”) manages to ruin Shaggy. Linda Cardellini (“Brokeback Mountain”) is mildly okay as the smart Velma. Scooby-Doo looks awful, sounds awful and is just a hideous version of the character we once loved. The interactions between the main characters are sometimes disgusting. All the characters spout out utter nonsense. Rowan Atkinson (“Witches”) is a great actor but here, he isn’t used effectively and actually becomes quite annoying.

This is a film that was made for the simple purpose of making money. No good ideas are in “Scooby-Doo”. This is supposed to be a horror/comedy and I grant you it’s scary but only because it’s just so bad. There are some weird and inappropriate sex and drug jokes that make this unsuitable for the young kids that might overlook how dumb the rest of the movie is. The film misses the fun of the 60s cartoon series but maybe that fun can never work in a live-action movie. Still, this is just a butchering of a cartoon series that brought joy to countless kids.