arkmabat
This is my absolute favorite Scooby Doo film released after the early 90s gap of no Scooby movies. To start off, the animation is well above par. There are beautiful hand-drawn scenes without the loads of computer editing and digital auto-correct painting we see in many shows today. A lot of time and money was put into the visuals. The characters really get into their personalities, both the voice acting and the animation, but the animation even more so. Classic animation principles such as "exaggeration" and "squash and stretch" are utilized to great effect in this film. The voice acting is done very well, with a special appearance from Cam Clarke, who many cartoon addicts will also know as the classic voice of Leonardo from the old Ninja Turtles series. One major and unfortunate disappointment is that Shaggy eats meat in this film and so Casey Casem (Shaggy's original and familiar voice actor) wouldn't do the voice acting for Shaggy in this film. Really though, how could he not eat meat in the South? It adds to its historical and geographical accuracy for me and what was needed to be done was done. Young viewers who haven't been to the South will learn a thing or two about southern food, that's for sure. Anyway...The soundtrack is one worth noting. I adore Steve Bramson's work, as well as the other various rock bands who play some 90s alternative rock for the film. I actually got around to emailing the composer and he mailed me back, saying: "My score to Scooby Doo on Zombie Island is also one of my favorites. Thanks for your interest in my work. As to background-that could be a long answer! l'll just say that I've been around music my whole life and absorbed from everything I've heard over these many years. As far as the theme goes, and I assume you mean the lyrical one (there's also a couple of other darker ones), I attribute that lyricism to my early years playing a lot of jazz and in so doing learning all of the classic songs, all of which had such great melodies. More specifically, I think I derive a lot of inspiration from the project itself: watching the video, getting into the story and mood. Somehow this translates to a musical idea and I'm off to the races! Certainly for Scooby Doo, I was drawing on the clichés of old horror movies and tried to have fun with that." Bramson composed music for the old intense TV show JAG and won the "Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction And Composition". Pretty big name for a cartoon, needless to say. Lastly, the plot is interesting and engaging but not historical at all. There were no colonies like the one depicted in the South around the 1800s and the idea of the fictional deity referred to in the film seems to be stolen from an episode of the classic show, season three, "Make A Beeline Away From That Feline". Apart from not being historical though, there are many interesting twists and turns that keep the viewer engaged. It's simple enough for a child to follow but potentially intriguing to a wider audience as well. Humorous antics between Shaggy and Scooby add a nice contrast to the slightly dark theme at hand. There is more violence in this film than probably any other Scooby Doo cartoon combined, so something to keep in mind if you have very young children. It would have easily received a PG rating and some have even suggested PG-13. Y7 seems like the most appropriate rating to give it though.Anyway, I hope this is helpful and as you can probably see, I love this movie to death, even now that I'm in college. Some films pass the test of time and for me, this one has.
zombiefan89
A must see for any Scooby fan. Capturing the essence of the thirty plus year old source material was a very hard to do, but they did it! My favorite was Frank Welker as the first, the last, and the only voice for Fred Jones in the series! With the majority of the original cast no longer with us, it's great to always have Frank voicing Fred. The opening is very touching. You can't even hear the age in his voice! He sounds just as youthful and natural as the rest of the cast! Seeing the gang separated after moving on with their lives and finally reunited was heart warming. It was reminiscent of close friends from high school, that post college, we only speak over the phone or via Facebook. The story was well written. The dialogue as well. It has some scary imagery that may give little kids nightmares. The detail on the monsters is quite something. Overall, as I said before, it's a must watch for Scooby fans. I would say age 7 to infinity!
kyle-mcdonald
Well it is about I got to watch this I tried to watch when it first came out but I never could because every time I went to go rent it somebody else had and when I went to buy it I could never find it. So After all these years of not being able to watch I finally get to see and I was nowhere near disappointed. I have to start by saying that I have always loved Scooby-Doo and I can never get tired of it and I will always watch Scooby-Doo. The storyline this movie follows is very good and cool lots of twists and turns along the witch is always good for a Scooby-Doo or mystery movie. The animation is very good all the characters are well drawn, the zombies look very cool and the zombies are one of the best things about this movie. The voice over actors do a very good job such as Scott Innes as Scooby-Doo, Billy West as Shaggy, Mary Kay Bergman as Daphne, Frank Welker as Fred, and B.J. Ward as Velma, and they even have Mark Hamil as Snakebite Scruggs. The acting of the actors doing the voices are very good. So all I can say is make sure you watch Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island because it is awesome.Overall Rating: ********** out of ********** ***** out of ***** Well some may consider this a spoiler so thats why I saved it for last My favorite thing about this movie is that this Mystery was all real no man in a mask its all real and I found that really cool.
wile_E2005
By the early 1990s, the Scooby-Doo franchise was starting to wear thin. They were making "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo," which was absolutely brilliant! It made good jokes poking at the old formula, but people were beginning to grow tired of the old-school, outdated techniques that Hanna-Barbera was doing (limited animation, cheesy writing and music, their trademark Hanna-Barbera sound effects). So in 1994, with the success of the "Animaniacs" animated TV series, Hanna-Barbera decided to try and make an animated TV movie done in the same style as an old Warner Bros. cartoon, by upgrading to full animation, fully-orchestrated "Carl Stalling"-like music scores, doing the same comedy and gags that "Animaniacs" employed, and using all-new sound effects to make the cartoon blend in with the 1990s, in their TV movie "Arabian Nights." They decided to have Scooby-Doo and Shaggy appear in it, too. Unfortunately, that film was a disaster, and marked the end of an era for Hanna-Barhera. So, flash forward to 1998. Hanna-Barbera decided to breathe new life into the Scooby-Doo franchise, updating it in a better way than "Arabian Nights" tried to do. The actual production of the movie was outsourced over to Warner Bros. Animation, the studio most famous for creating Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney Tunes. But you won't find Chuck Jones's or Friz Freleng's or Bob Clampett's work here. WB made a more professional, dark, and more realistic Scooby-Doo animated feature! Since Shaggy was depicted eating meat, Casey Kasem (who is a vegetarian) refused to voice Shaggy, and will only voice him if Shaggy is a vegetarian, too. So Billy West does Shaggy's voice. I must admit, he does a pretty good Shaggy! Billy West is a great modern-day voice actor, supplying the voices for Fry, Stimpy the Cat, the Cheerios Honeybee and many other 'toons out there. But Don Messick, the original voice of Scooby-Doo, died before the film was put in production. It's really sad, cause Don did the best Scooby voice ever. So Scott Innes was hired to voice Scooby. I'm sorry to say it, but Scott can't do a really good Scooby-Doo. He makes him sound like Roger Rabbit. It doesn't match the quality that Don Messick's Scooby-Doo voice had. Velma is now voiced by veteran actress B.J. Ward, and does a good job at it, too. Velma went through many actress changes over the years, but Nicole Jaffe will always be the best Velma. Daphne's new voice makes her sound too perky. Frank Welker, however, returned to voice Fred, and he can still do the voice well. Here, Fred is actually very funny! I love it when he makes jokes on how they used to solve mysteries. "It's probably a hologram of a man in a pirate suit." "It's probably the gardener in disguise!" "That's just a mask"! Little does he know that the monsters are REAL! The commercials advertised it as, "THIS time, the monsters are real!" But they had real monsters on the show, before, back in the 1980s. Not just bad ones in "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo," but some GOOD monsters as well, like in "Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School." Here, the zombies are the good guys, but the werecats are not. Another thing here is the animation. Don't expect the second-rate animation you see on Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Warner Bros. Animation is doing it now, and they give it a more realistic, full-animated look that will be seen in all other Scooby-Doo movies WB produced after this. Fred and Daphne now got a wardrobe change, too. But it's still better than the clothes they wear on "What's New, Scooby-Doo." The music is no longer cartoon-style music. Here, it sounds more professionally-scored, sort of like a modern-day Disney film. But there is a downside to Termite Terrace producing the Scooby-Doo movies. They began phasing out the classic Hanna-Barbera sound effects that enhanced the older Scooby-Doo cartoons. Newer, digitally-recorded sound effects are now heard here, and the H-B SFX are now only used for sequences featuring Scooby and Shaggy in them. This also unfortunately carried out to "What's New, Scooby-Doo." The Mystery Machine was also changed, here. It is now a standard minivan with the classic colors added. In 2002, they brought back the old Mystery Machine, but with GPS equipment and computers and more modern junk. Anyways, this is the very first Scooby-Doo animated movie that Warner Bros. Animation produced, and they have taken over production on the Scooby franchise ever since. But this is a pretty good movie, actually. It's too bad most of the others were a bunch of crap, with a few exceptions (see my other comments for details). I recommend this, but only for those over eight years old.
