, but who has now given up on searching for Nessie and wants to find the Abominable Snowman instead. Finally, we have the High Lama (James Hong), who explains that the large crystals he keeps in his temple are there to protect the villagers from the Abominable Snowman’s powers, a large crystal that Jeffries seems very keen on checking out.
Stray Observations:
• This is a very Shaggy/Scooby-centric movie with the rest of the Scooby gang taking a backseat to their “running in terror” shenanigans. • The High Lama spookily floats along the ground much like David Lo Pan did in the John Carpenter film Big Trouble in Little China, and James Hong played both of these characters. • Early on, Velma remarks that impressions in the snow left by the Abominable Snowman’s huge feet aren’t even as deep as Daphne’s boot prints. This clue immediately dismisses the idea that the monster is real, yet everyone will still react throughout the movie as if it were. • Minga goes missing and is believed to have been abducted by the Abominable Snowman. If the Scooby Gang didn’t have the collective memory of a goldfish, they’d realize that anyone who goes missing at the beginning of the mystery is usually the monster. • We get an impressive mine car chase that is right out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. • Shaggy briefly takes over DJ duties at the weather station and his “On Air Radio Voice” is Casey Kasem’s real voice, a nice nod to his other job of hosting “Casey Kasem’s American Top 40.”
When the mystery finally wraps up, it should be a surprise to no one that Minga turns out to be the Abominable Snowman — she did it to keep Del around because of her feelings for him — but we still have a villain to uncover as well, and that would be Professor Jeffries who was looting the mountain of its crystals. I have to give Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! points for having a monster hoax that wasn’t related to the criminal they end up apprehending, I just wish the story itself wasn’t as thin as the air atop Mount Everest. Our cast of characters are all fun and engaging, with the voice talent providing solid work and staying on point, but most of the movie’s short run-time is wasted on seemingly endless Shaggy and Scooby chase sequences with the mystery itself seeming like an afterthought. Worst of all, we get this moment where Shaggy and Scooby-Doo discover Shangri-La, and yet the writers do absolutely nothing with this amazing location, it’s a two-minute pit stop that is simply used as a backdrop to another lame chase sequence.
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! is another light and fluffy Scooby-Doo mystery, and the best thing that could be said about this episode is that the character designs were interesting — the design of the Abominable Snowman being particularly good — and there was some really nice animation throughout, but overall, there isn’t much to praise or denigrate as the movie is fairly forgettable and the plot itself would have probably worked better as a thirty-minute episode and not stretched out to seventy-two minutes. This is an entry that only completists should bother checking out.
- Movie Rank - 5.5/10
Summary
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! is mostly guilty of being a repetitive and wasteful adventure, with most of the Scooby Gang missing for a good portion of the film’s running time, and the only interesting element being the twist of the monster hoax and the crime being two unconnected plots.
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