Home Media Magazine - September 2-8, 2007 - (Page 34) REVIEWS I CHILL OUT, SCOOBY-DOO! Street 9/4 Warner, Animated, $19.98 DVD, NR. Edited by John Latchem www.homemediamagazine.com cooby-Doo is a tricky mutt. For those raised on the mystery-solving adventures of Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, Fred and Velma, the recent live-action films, the new animated series “What’s New Scooby-Doo” and the many straight-to-DVD animated flicks are travesties. Heck, we’re still mad about that whole Scrappy-Doo thing. But it’s hard to determine if the new renditions of Scooby-Doo are actually unbearable or if we’re just too old to have patience for mysteries where it’s obvious whodunit in the first five minutes. In Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!, the 11th DTV Scooby-Doo feature since 1998, all the original elements are present, including Casey Kasem’s still-perfect vocal stylings for Shaggy. Sure, Fred awkwardly pokes at a cell phone that has a magic GPS feature showing where the caller is, but at least the Mystery Machine hasn’t turned into a hybrid. The film is reminiscent of a handful of classic episodes that involved snow monsters. S This time, Scooby and Shaggy find themselves shanghaied on Mount Everest with one very angry yeti. The animation is crisp, and the vocal talent (including Rene Auberjonois and Alfred Molina), impressive. There are a few extras, including a deleted scene and a music video for “Pirates Song,” which, notably, has nothing to do with the film. The game “Scooby-Doo’s Shangri-La Showdown” is a mild diversion but won’t impress kids who are used to more reactive video games — this one actually tells you when to push the buttons, rather than letting a child figure it out for himself. For all its slapstick humor, groan-worthy jokes and formulaic mysteries, “Scooby-Doo” is still an iconic franchise that hasn’t lost its charm for both parents and their children. — Laura Tiffany I ELF BOWLING: THE MOVIE Street 10/2 Universal/Screen Media, Animated, $14.98 DVD, ‘PG’ for some language and rude humor. hristmas has inspired some certifiably insane kid flicks that, with the gift of time, have become kitsch classics — Santa Claus Conquers the Martians comes to mind. It’s with this thought that I’d love to flash forward in a time machine 50 years to see if Elf Bowling: The Movie becomes a kitschy reminder of the turn of the century. It’s based on one of the first viral phenomena of the Internet, the computer game Elf Bowling from 1999. In the Elf Bowling story of Christmas, Santa (voice of Joe Alaskey) is a pirate and victim of a mutiny. He and his evil half-brother, Dingle Kringle (comedian Tom Kenny) end up at the North Pole, fulfilling a prophecy that someday a white-bearded fellow will lead the toymakers … somewhere. In this case, it ends up being Fiji after Santa’s nefarious brother stages a coup. And yes, there is elf bowling, shoved in among a magic orb, a gold-digger, a strudel-cooking Mrs. Claus and Easter Island statues that come to life. There is some talent behind the film. Animation director Rick Farmiloe has worked on such films as The Simpsons Movie, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. And Kenny is the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants However, the humor may be too crude for many parents — though to be fair, it’s true to the original video game with the butt references, armpit farts and fake swearing (“What the cranberries!?”). The computer animation may be too ugly for kids who expect elves and penguins to be cute. Here, they mostly look like ugly, middle-aged men. Add that to a plot that is pretty weird. The good news is that while this DVD seems extremely late to cash in on the original Elf Bowling phenomena, it’s actually perfect timing. Those office slackers of the ’90s, the twentysomethings who truly got a kick out of elf bowling, are now the people who have kids just the right age to watch this Bad Santa-for-kids ’toon. — Laura Tiffany C I SUN DOGS Street 10/2 Palm, Documentary, $19.99 DVD, NR. J amaica has contributed significantly to world culture. Take Bob Marley, for instance, the king of reggae music. He took it to new heights, with foot-tapping and head-bobbing grooves matched by some catchy political lyrics that still resonate today. The Jamaican bobsled team is another story, and it’s a good one, at that. They, like Marley, captured the world by storm, becoming the hottest thing on ice with their escapades at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary before shocking the world by finishing 14th in the Winter games in France. The ’88 team even inspired a movie — the 1993 film Cool Runnings, starring John Candy. Now comes this documentary that adds another chapter to Jamaican lore: In it, a dogsled team tries to bark its way to a place among the big dogs. Producer Jimmy Buffet — yes, that Jimmy Buffet — is among the group chasing this dream. “I don’t know anything about racing dogsleds,” Buffet jokes during one of his cameos in the documentary. “But it sounds like fun.” Sun Dogs is sometimes amusing, sometimes sad and sometimes heavy-handed. It also offers a reality check of the disturbing politics that slide for business-asusual in a country where catering to tourists becomes more important than caring for its own people. This documentary touches on Jamaica’s poverty, crime, lack of education and the resources unavailable to natives. But the main thrust of Sun Dogs is in tracking the Jamaican dogsled team on the road to the 2006 U.K. Championships in Scotland and the many obstacles presented along the way. It’s a compelling story and one that adds more flavor to the beauty of Jamaica and the diversity of its people. — Benny Lopez 34 Home Media Magazine September 2–8, 2007 http://www.homemediamagazine.com
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