Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights

Head, meet wall. Repeat. That's what I feel like doing after watching a third Hannah-Barbera crapfest masquerading as a Scooby-Doo movie. To be fair, Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights (1994) seems light-years ahead of its predecessors The Ghoul School and The Reluctant Werewolf, but it's still pretty terrible.

In fact, calling this a Scooby Doo movie is a pretty good hand of false advertising. The movie starts out with Scooby and Shaggy (no Scrappy this time, thank god, but no Fred, Daphne, or Velma, either) arriving at the Caliph's palace to apply for the job of royal food tasters. Of course, instead of just tasting the Caliph's lunch, they eat the whole thing and wind up on the run from the palace guards. They end up (of course!) in the harem, where the Caliph has come to choose his bride. And, surprise surprise, the Caliph chooses a disguised Shaggy as his bride-to-be. To stall for time while Scooby thinks of an escape, Shaggy decides to tell the Caliph a few stories from the Arabian Nights.

Shag and Scoob are on screen for about ten minutes when the "real" movie starts, featuring a few other Hannah-Barbera classic characters, such as Yogi, Boo-Boo, and Magilla Gorilla in two Arabian Nights tales. Wait, what? How can you have the audacity to even call this a Scooby Doo movie? Scooby and Shaggy are merely a plot device to set up the real movie, which doesn't even feature them! What the hell is Hannah-Barbera thinking??

Well, I guess they were thinking they needed to do anything but follow the same tired slapstick comedy routine they used for Ghoul School and Reluctant Werewolf. It was a full five years between the release of Reluctant Werewolf and Arabian Nights, and one must imagine that H-B was thinking long and hard about the next step for Scooby Doo movies. The slapstick format was horrendous, DOA. It had alienated older fans, and it was so bad that even kids weren't watching it. So, what was H-B's bright idea? Let's make a Scooby Doo movie that's not really a Scooby Doo movie! Yeah.... sure.

Sure, the stories within this movie actually have a plot, and steer well away from horrific puns and tired sight gags. There's actually a twinkling of clever writing, particularly in the Golden Toothbrush segment of the Magilla Gorilla/Sinbad tale. True, this movie is infinitely more watchable than the previous two, which were painfully boring. But an audience actually looking for a movie about Shaggy and Scooby is gonna feel a little shafted.

For this film, the animation quality is a bit crisper than previously, but honestly, I hate it. It feels flat. The colors are super crisp and bright. This animation is lacking the darkness and depth that was always a hallmark of the original Scooby Doo series.

The bottom line: Arabian Nights is better than its two predecessors, but it's still pretty sad and it's not even really a Scooby Doo movie. I recommend skipping this one as well.

Storyline & plot: 6/10

Cinematography & effects: 3/10

Music & mood: 2/10

Performances: 4/10

The Reverend says: 4/10