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Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword features the voice
acting of Mindy Cohn, Kelly Hu, Casey Kasem, Sab Shimono,
and George Takei. ***
Scooby and the gang are back to solve yet another mystery.
This time around, the crew heads over to the land of the
rising sun. A martial arts tournament begins, and things
begin to go horribly awry. It isn’t long before the mystery-solving
crew has to pit their smarts against everything Japan has
to offer. ***
Scooby-Doo has survived in various incarnations for
four decades. The basic formula must work pretty damn well,
since they’re still making various shows and movies. And
while Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword doesn’t bring anything
new to the table for the gang, it does sum up pretty well
why this franchise has kept up such a big following. ***
I won’t lie, we’ve seen this story before – even in
the Scooby universe. But it’s an entertaining movie nonetheless.
Certainly worth mentioning is the vocal talent that is on
board – as with most animated Scooby-Doo incarnations, legendary
radio personality Casey Kasem lends his voice to the dimwitted
Shaggy. Also on board for this particular movie are George
Takei of Star Trek fame, as well as Sab Shimono and Kelly
Hu. Is it the biggest, best Scooby movie yet? Nope, but
it’s a worth entry in the series, and no fan will want to
be without it. ---
Image and Sound:
As a fairly new piece of animation, Scooby-Doo and
the Samurai Sword looks pretty damn good on DVD. It’s a
bright, clear animated feature throughout that doesn’t have
any sort of visual defects. This isn’t a drop-dead gorgeous
transfer (it was never meant to be that kind of movie),
but it’s about as good as a Scooby-Doo animated movie is
going to look or sound on DVD.
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