Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Extrava-Christmas: "A Scooby-Doo Christmas"

The Undefined Gamer has a spooky Christmas!
Okay, sorry for that one.
 
 
    This holiday special sucks.
    Now, this is not surprising, as this special (30 minutes total!) was
made as part of the What's New Scooby Doo? series, whose episodes and
movies where either OK or god-awful. But Christmas specials usually
get bonus points, for as Alex has said before, even the bad ones tend
to capture the holiday spirit in a captivating way. This one doesn't
even have that.
    In this rendition of our spotted brown dog, Scoob and friends plan to
stay at a family member's estate, but the bridge to get there is
destroyed. So they decide to stay in Winter Hollow for the Holidays.
    Winter Hollow is unfortunately plagued by lack of TVs and the
Abominable Snowman, who tears apart people's chimneys. And as all
their heating escapes from the giant hole in the wall, everyone has to
stay at the only inn in town. And somehow this leads to people not
celebrating Christmas for years.

    Eventually they learn that the Abominable Snowman is supposedly the
ghost of Black Jack Brody, who stole gold from an immigrant named
Shamus Fagan. The gold was never found, and Black Jack died by becoming
encased in a snowman in the middle of a blizzard (smart disguise?).
Chimney soot was curiously found on his body.
    Eventually it's found out a local Professor, who was a descendant of
Shamus Fagan, became the Abominable Snowman by encasing a metal
triangle machine in a snowman, which he drove (because that somehow
makes branches bendable and can give snowmen facial expressions?).
There's not a lot of sense into how the costume worked, as is a common
flaw in the What's New? series. But come on, this is ridiculous. At
least his motive makes sense (he was looking for his family's gold).
    Now here's a plot twist, turns out everyone's chimneys are made from
Shamus Fagan's gold bricks! Now considering one brick equals 1 million
dollars in today's market, this means Professor Triangle here is a
billionaire! Well, if he didn't give it away to the whole town. Well,
hey, at least now the whole gang can finally afford separate houses!
    And that's how it ends. Professor Snowbrain is forgiven, everyone ends
up rich, and nothing to do with Christmas is ever accomplished, aside
from one brief scene where they all stare at a Christmas tree
together.

    This special is terrible! It's message doesn't make sense (don't look
for you family's stolen gold, kids! Err... do. Don't. Aw heck, you'll
all be millionaires at the end so...), the Snowman costume is never
explained how the hell it works.., (it's just... sciencey magic). And
the fact that there has almost nothing christmassy except the title
card and end scene in it make for a poor special. Plus it seems there
was very little research done into making this (it seems Hanna-Barbara
and Warner Brother's "genius" writers hadn't a clue at how valuable
gold really is). Plus, it's not even enjoyable. I would seriously not
watch this again.
    Well, at least it's not lethal. And isn't that the true meaning of
Christmas?
A Scooby Doo Christmas gets 2 snowflakes out of 6

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