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The New Scooby-Doo Movies: Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner? (1972)
Very entertaining but goes off the rails a bit towards the end
I have a serious question: is Don Knotts supposed to be Don Knotts, or is he supposed to be the detective? The episode seems Knott to know!
There's a lot to like here - Don Knotts' series of disguises is great, his pep talks he gives himself in the mirror are hilarious, and the gang as always is in fine form. Great moments: Scooby trying to tell everyone he saw Don Knotts on the road behind them; Fred casually reading a book of ghost stories in bed in a (maybe) haunted mansion; Shaggy's ever more elaborate sandwich constructions.
The mystery itself sort of works too, but there are a few pieces at the end that really didn't come together for me, which is why I dinged this from a 7/10 to a 6/10. The big one is just the nature of Don Knotts' character. If he'd been the detective from the start, that would have checked out, but he's clearly "Don Knotts," and why would Don Knotts the actor be investigating the disappearance of the Captain? Another is, how is Don Knotts in the suit of armor? Seriously! I'm pretty sure he goes from in costume to in the suit of armor to back in costume over a series of quick cuts, and it doesn't make sense. Are there *two* Don Knotts in this universe? It's also confusing how Don Knotts was able to put together such a sweet dressing room inside the walls of someone else's house, but that's at least excusable because those parts are really funny.
A more minor complaint is that they've sort of given up explaining how the bad guys pull of their supernatural effects - I'd have loved to know how they did the ghost effect, since Don Knotts did it early on and then the two nephews did it at the end. Some crazy explanation about fishing line and rear projection - that was always a highlight of the classic episodes.
The New Scooby-Doo Movies: The Frickert Fracas (1972)
Who is Jonathan Winters?
As New Scooby-Doo movies go, this one is decent. The gang are all great and there's a very funny setup of Winters, Shaggy, and Scooby quietly wrestling for the position of most cowardly. I also laughed at the extended water wheel scene - an underrated slapstick set piece!
Still, a real risk of these kinds of guest star focused episodes is one of timeliness: 40 years on will we remember who the guest stars were and why the jokes they told were funny? The answer for this episode is... kind of a resounding "no". I had no idea who Jonathan Winters was, and don't think I've ever heard any of his old routines.
From context clues I assume that Ma Frickert was a recurring character that Winters would do in his comedy, and I'm sure there's a long catalogue of hilarious Frickert's Farm jokes that presumably viewers in 1972 would have been familiar with, but watching in 2020 it's all sort of baffling. His stand up style of doing voices is also fairly dated, but that scene at least was funny because of how ineffective his bit ended up being.
I was trying to think of a good modern analogue, and the best I can come up with is this: imagine if Bob's Burgers did an episode where the kids ran into James Corden, *playing himself*, and they did a spoof on carpool karaoke. Would that still be funny to people in 2050?
(Side note: Bob's Burgers is smart with their cameos, as the celebrities play random one-off weirdos, so who the voice is becomes a fun bit of trivia but is not integral to the plot of the episode).
Scooby and the gang have a timelessness to them - partly because the franchise was so successful that they're still making new episodes, but also because of how clear their character definitions are, and how broad a lot of the jokes are. Plenty of original episodes have a joke or two that's distinctly 1970, but 40 years later you either miss those or find them dated in a charming way. To have the episode center not a character or a trope or a broad caricature, but rather a particular comedian's routine, just doesn't hold up nearly as well.
It's still enjoyable, and if you ignore the parts where we, the viewers, are clearly supposed to know what Winters is talking about, he turns in a solid performance.
The New Scooby-Doo Movies: The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair (1972)
A fun adventure with Batman and Robin
This one is leaps and bounds better than the Three Stooges opener! The mystery is fun, and the gang plays pretty well off Batman and Robin. More so than some of the other New Movies, the writers got a good two act structure working, and nailed a satisfying (if somewhat obvious) villain reveal at the end.
It's always funny in 2020 to see classic Batman TV content - it's so campy and colorful, and kind of wonderful! We get a few great, "Holy *insert thing*!" lines from Robin. I find the villains a little overly campy, but this is still a better Joker than Leto.
Sure, like the other New Movies, it's a little bloated (the haunted house and toy warehouse chase scenes both drag on a bit), and the very different aesthetic of classic Batman make it more a cross-over episode than a proper Scooby-Doo episode, but as always the gang are great, and in the end it was entertaining - what more can you ask for from a classic cartoon?
The New Scooby-Doo Movies: Ghastly Ghost Town (1972)
A Rough Start to The New Scooby-Doo Movies
This is a rough episode of television. In general I'm finding the New Scooby-Doo Movies not to be that great; this one has got to be one of the worse ones, but also really highlights some of the general flaws of the New Movies. In no particular order:
The Stooges were not particularly funny - it's possible I just don't "get" the Stooges, my parents were Marx Brothers fans so I never saw any of their movies growing up - but I suspect this is a particularly weak turn for them. In their defense, at least everyone still knows who the Three Stooges are, unlike episode 4's Jonathan Winters.
A broader problem with the way they do guest stars is that so much time is devoted to introducing and giving laugh lines to the guests, that we don't really get a good introduction to the eventual villains. Not like the villains had a ton of depth in the original show, but the big reveal is less fun in the New Movies because more time had to be spent on the guests at the expense of the bad guys.
The writers seem to have struggled to spin the original Scooby-Doo format out from 23 to 45 minutes. The original series generally has really tight pacing, starting with a tease of the monster, then a series of spooky encounters and clues, leading up to a big reveal. Here, they try and do a mid-act mini-reveal of some sort but it never really lands.
This episode in particular (or at least the copy that's available on Boomerang) has several glaring continuity errors in the middle that make it difficult to follow. It seems like Velma's Act 2 disappearance was shuffled late in production - she disappears, then everyone goes to search for her, but for one quick shot she's back with the group. Later when Shaggy and Scooby are rescuing everyone, they say they're rescuing Velma, but at that point they already know that she's been reunited with Fred, Daphne, and the Stooges.
There's also some plot points that are just really bizarre! I wasn't able to follow what the backstory of the massive, extraordinarily sophisticated dinosaur vehicle was, or why the bad guys had a literal bat mobile.
The show definitely still has its moments, and the performances from the series regulars is great as always. Shaggy and Scooby are hilarious, and the whole gang are great characters that you really do enjoy watching look for clues. Unfortunately, this episode's flaws mostly drag down the fun parts.
Tank Girl (1995)
Horrible
Horrible, horrible film. Scattered, frantic, with unlikeable characters and an uninteresting plot. The worst movie I've seen in a very long time. I watched about 2/3s of the way through because nothing else was on TV, and then turned the damn thing off and read a book. Nothing anybody does in the whole movie makes sense! None of the characters have coherent motivations, and the lead is especially bad - poorly acted, poorly directed, and poorly written. I'll never get that time back! I will say, though, that the costumes were "fun". How bad is that, when the only positive thing you can say about a movie is that the costumes were "fun"?