A Mediocre Gem: The Premiere of "Scoob!"
A Premiere Review Instead of a Movie Review for "Scoob!"
5/16/20
DISCLAIMER: This is not a review. Read further to find out why.
Throughout the abundance of Instagram ads discussed in the last essay, it was clear to most that the "Scoob!" movie would be premiered live on the evening of its intended release date. This did not happen. I realized I was missing the premiere at around 7:45, (the movie starting at 7), and I freaked out. I foraged through the many different websites and links this movie sent me, and after a solid ten minutes of looking, I found it. It was a live video that had supposedly been going since 7pm, but all that was displaying was a picture of the characters. I was confused, and I was assuming that they had a decent amount of trouble getting the movie started. Though, I felt like an idiot after waiting there until 9pm when the livestream just ended. I was confused, but on the live stream website it took me to, it said that I could scroll back to the beginning and rewatch what happened. Out of curiosity, to see if there were any early messages or anything, I scrolled back to the beginning of the stream. What I found was confusing; it appeared to be thirty minutes of people talking on Zoom, a countdown, and then nothing. I went to YouTube in search of the movie, but all I found was this thirty minute premiere video. Thinking that something might be explained in this, I watched it all, and what I found was beautiful.
This "beautiful" thing in which I speak of is not the movie itself, but rather a premiere party. Somehow, throughout every advertisement that I saw, I never noticed it say "movie night premiere event". This meant that it was advertising a special event to celebrate the premiere on the night of the movie's release. I was sad and irritated, but I decided to watch through the entire premiere anyway because I was bored.
The rest of this essay will be divided into three parts:
1: The celebrity appearances
2: The music
3: The other things
Part One: The Celebrity Appearances
The only way the marketing team knew they were going to get people to watch this livestream was with misleading people to think this was the actual movie and celebrities. The setup for the dynamic seemed to be kid and adult, and this actually worked out pretty great and made the premiere what it is. The first pair was the obvious Lil' Shelbon and Will Forte the Comedy God as Shaggy and Young Shaggy. They did great and it was actually really cute at times. But, at the end, they asked all the hundreds of thousands of viewing children to make a sandwich with random things in the house. This was funny for me, but it probably traumatized the parents of the world.
I also want to point out that three times in the premiere, they did a little trivia segment with all of the actors. I really had no opinion on this, so I guess I'll just say that it was an okay segment between interviews. Speaking of which, the next interview was with Ken Jeong and Ariana Grande or something. This might be my favorite interview not only of the premiere, but of all time. Ken began the interview casually by talking about the sandwich challenge, and it was cool and nice. But instantly, probably knowing they were on a crunch for time, Ariana segued into the 'notorious' Scoob! Tik Tok Dance Challenge. (Rant incoming).
By now, I think I've figured it out. Every generation, marketing teams for rip-offs and spin-offs world wide have got to stay hip to market to all the cool kids on the block. Apparently, after seeing how they all thought simply 'going viral' was cool ten years ago, they decided to do the same by making a Tik Tok dance challenge. Somehow, through the worlds longest and most confusing round of Telephone ever, word got passed that this is the way to market a blockbuster movie. Simply 'making a dance challenge' on that cool, groovy new app all the kids are posting on. It's really amusing to see how these people view modern trends, despite Tik Tok being on its way out. I remember back in my day when movies used to just post a trailer or two; the teaser being a minute long, not three. I remember when movies didn't capitalize on, thereby officially killing modern trends. Really, it's funny just how late to these trends everyone is. Okay, that was my rant, back to the essay.
Primarily because of everything that I just said, I expected this to be insanely cringy. And it was, without a doubt. First off, the dancing made no sense. If this is a dance challenge, at least relate it to the movie and not just something that looks straight out of a song that's weirdly popular for no reason. You know, I could write paragraphs analyzing every detail about why this is so dumb, but I would find writing anymore about this really cringy. Last thing though, was Ken saying "look at the shadow" to give the poor, poor animators a shoutout.
After something I'm going to discuss in the third section of this essay, Ken and Ariana kept talking about dogs for a bit. Then, one of the greatest parts of the premiere was Ken about to jokingly critique his part in the movie. It was cute and cool, but then Scooby Doo popped in and said they were talking for too long. The timing of the editing was impeccable, because it was so clear that the movie had to look completely flawless to the public eye. Right afterwards, I thought it was worth mentioning that the strange kid said "acoustically", and that left me just confused and aggravated.
After a performance I'll discuss in the music section, we got the second round of movie trivia. This was fine, but we got a quick snapshot from the movie of Fred on a date with the Mystery Machine, and that made me really excited to see the movie (which I never got to see.) Nothing happened in the next interview with Amanda Say "Fried" and Piercing Something, but the kid's face when Amanda was talking was really funny. The kid also looks a lot like my friend's crush, but that's unrelated. Then Amanda talked about how quirky she is and her love for animals in a genuinely sweet and emotional way. It then transitioned to a part I had to skip the second time around because it really made me want to adopt a dog. I'll talk about the next part here in section three and skip right to the final celebrity interview.
In this one, we see that kid that was in Fuller House and the Director, because Zac Efron was way too cool for this dumb kids movie premiere. Now, I'm aware that this is a big accusation, but McKenna Grace is a god damn liar. At the beginning of this interview, she stated that she was a "huge Scooby-Doo fan", but later, she said that we had "never seen the origins of Scooby and Shaggy". We have, at least in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies she and I remember (we're the same age, so she isn't seven, believe it or not!) So I couldn't find the scene from the Matthew Lillard movie I remember, but I found one from 2009's "Scooby Doo!: The Mystery Begins". In one of the beginning scenes in this movie was Scooby clearly meeting Shaggy for the first time (link at the bottom of the blogpost).
This whole thing aside, the interview was pretty boring and the kid was cringy, but there were still one funny moment. This being the director's perfect face of confusion when McKenna called chocolates her "guilty pleasure" (18:33-18:47). Afterwards, Scooby jumped on the call and kicked the kid off. This part was where they finally decided to stop pointlessly overworking the animators to make Scooby the host. Instead, they just did the dumbest sketch in movie premiere history that the poor director did great on, and it ended with Scooby deciding to turn his camera off.
That about wraps it up for the celebrity interviews, so now, transitioning to the music.
Part Two: The Music
The first song in this premiere was "an exclusive in home performance by Lennon Stella acoustically performing 'Summer Feelings'" - Ariana the child. This part was confusing, because it was either an editing mistake or flat-out lip-syncing, but probably both. The guitar slapping, for instance, was so delayed it was hilarious. However the video and audio was recorded, though, it still sounded nice. Much better than the actual song, I must say.
The next song, I can assume, was the real lead single for this album. It felt like the absolute epitome of generic for Kane Brown and his style. There isn't a single thing I could possibly say about this appallingly forgettable trash-heap of a "song". Except for whoever Ava Max is, because how cringy and terrible her performance was seems to have scarred me. The only way I can describe it is "Fergie-like", and anyone who's seen her live rendition of the national anthem knows what I mean.
Part Three: The Other Things
The first "other thing" that was definitely worth talking about was this strange 30 second or so dance thing. Without doing any research on this part, I'm assuming by the dialogue that comes after this scene that Ken Jeong has his own American Idol-type singing/dancing show. During it, we saw Scooby dressed up as a club sandwich with different dancers and an audience for some reason. Followed Ken taking his mask off, revealing that he was a metal dog all along! Afterwards, I was left confused, wondering if it had even happened or not. It began and ended without an ounce of context and it was confusing all throughout.
Then, to tackle yet another cool and hip trend with the kids, to log in a little more screen time, Will Forte and Gina Rodriguez did an unboxing segment. Apparently, it's a toy that you can find at Walmart with a bunch of little random toys and things inside. The video itself was all okay, for the most part. Upon online research, it seems that you can't actually find a cardboard Mystery Machine with toys inside at your local Walmart. Despite the video promising this in the bottom right corner of the screen, but whatever.
Though, speaking of mystery, I think we solved the question I had in my last essay. This question being; "did the Falcon Fury actually dab?" The answer appears to be 'yes', seeing as there were airhorn noises (you know, the ones that are cool and hip with the youngsters) over the dab. This was a very quick shot, and I doubt it was in the movie, but I also doubt it was any sort of coincidental mistake.
Right after the interview with McKenna and Tony (the director), we saw Jason Isaacs, who's an actor of one of the newer characters. So apparently, because they thought that Zac Efron would be on board with the premiere, they cast nine other people. Without Zac, though, this left Jason Isaacs all alone, and being one of the less important characters in the movie, he only got about half a minute of screen time. He was actually one of the genuinely funnier ones in the premiere, and I kind of wish we saw more of him, but I'm not in charge, am I?
Part Four (I guess): The End
In conclusion, this premiere was very funny; not to laugh with, but to laugh at, which can sometimes be just as good. In this case, it certainly was. Before I go, I think a few things are worth mentioning:
1. The misleading marketing tricked over 7 thousand people for nearly two hours in thinking that the actual movie was about to start.
2. Kane Brown called the movie "Scooby" instead of "Scoob". A very minor thing, but still funny.
Now, after wasting well over two hours on an essay analyzing celebrities awkwardly acting at each other, I'm gonna go eat some breakfast and be done with this movie until I watch it.
How Shaggy and Scooby actually met:
The movie premiere itself:
Image sources (in order):
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