Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase (2001) – Review

In the previous animated feature Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders, we saw Mystery Incorporated meet honest-to-goodness aliens, making it the gang’s first real foray into science fiction, but with Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, the franchise ratchets the sci-fi element up to eleven. This time out, Scooby-Doo and friends find themselves digitized and sucked into a computer game, and if that premise sounds a tad familiar to you, that would be because it was pretty much ripping off Disney’s 1982 sci-fi movie Tron.

In this movie, we find the Mystery Inc. gang visiting State University to try out a video game their old friend Eric Staufer (Bob Bergen) had developed, a game based on Mystery Incorporated’s past adventures. Unfortunately for Eric, his game has come down with a bit of a virus, or “Phantom Virus,” if you will. While working in the lab late one night, Eric, along with Professor Robert Kaufman (Tom Kane) and Eric’s lab partner Bill McLemore (Mikey Kelley) were attacked by this Phantom Virus when the lab’s experimental laser suddenly activated, bringing this cyber creature into the real world.

Is this thing supposed to be scary? If so it fails miserably.

We learn that Eric and Bill were both vying for the quarter of a million-dollar prize being awarded at an upcoming science fair, but Professor Kaufman had chosen to enter Eric’s Mystery Inc. game and not Bill’s baseball video game — I’m a little fuzzy on what kind of science fair awards prizes to video game designers, but what makes no bloody sense is that these bozos have this experimental laser, which is able to transmit objects into and out of cyberspace as well as seemingly creating sentient life, and yet Kaufman is all for entering a stupid video game into the science fair instead of a device that would literally change the world as we know it.

Setting aside the complete science fantasy of such an invention, this plot element is also about the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a Scooby-Doo movie and it’s simply introduced so that we can later have our heroes sucked into a virtual game world. Unfortunately, before the fun stuff can happen, we waste valuable time with the gang hunting for the Phantom Virus throughout the halls of the college campus. The only highlight here, and also the funniest Meta moment in the movie, happens when Fred (Frank Welker) goes into a take-charge mode and we get this delightful exchange.

Fred: “I think we stand a better chance of finding it if we split up.”
Shaggy and Scooby-Doo start heading off together.
Fred: “Hey, you guys, I didn’t say how we were going to split up.”
Shaggy: “Like, do we ever do it any other way?”

Note: Professor Kaufman outfits the gang with large magnets — the one thing that clearly harms the Phantom Virus — and so the only reason the villain is a threat is that our heroes constantly forget they have them. The villain has to accidentally step on one of the magnets just so Fred, Daphne, and Velma aren’t killed. That’s just sad.

Twenty minutes into this 74-minute movie, we finally get Mystery Inc. being sucked into Eric’s game after some mysterious individual activates the laser — gee, I wonder who it could be — so our heroes are left with no other choice but to fight their way through the ten levels of “mystery and adventure” to complete the game in order to escape it, with the goal of finding a box of Scooby Snacks to complete each level, all while fighting off the Phantom Virus at every turn.

Question: The Phantom Virus is shown to be able to not only manipulate electronic devices but also shoot lightning from his fingers, so why would he not just fry our heroes?  I’m not saying riding a T-Rex isn’t cool, because it is, but what is with the stupid spear?

A major problem I had with Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase was not just how lame the Phantom Virus was as a villain, which to be honest he was really lame, but that Eric’s video game wasn’t even a very good representation of a typical Scooby-Doo mystery. Pretty much every level of his game simply has our heroes running from various monsters, with no real mystery solving at all, and when the last level is reached, we get the “classic villains” from the gang’s past showing up, and they turn out to be “real” and not just guys in masks. How is that indicative of a Scooby-Doo mystery? The only interesting part of this whole movie was when the real-world Scooby gang ran into cyber versions of themselves, who have seemingly obtained enough self-awareness to realize that beating the game just puts them back on Level 1, so they just hang out at the malt shop instead tangling with those pesky monsters.

“Nice ascot.”

But who created the Phantom Virus? Eric’s crappy game may not have had a mystery, but this movie certainly does. Sadly, the mystery behind Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase is about as weak as the Phantom Virus itself. Could it be Professor Kaufman, trying to steal the experimental laser to win the quarter-million-dollar prize for himself? What about the gruff security guard, Officer Wembley (Joe Alaskey), who Fred believes was the only one inside the lab when they were sent into the game? Or was it Bill, whose baseball game was passed over as an entry for the science fair? Of course, it was Bill, and the movie doesn’t so much as give us clues to this as it instead hits us over the head with blatant finger-pointing; at the beginning of the movie we learn that Bill is proud of his baseball video game, then we get the Phantom Virus tossing out baseball terminology every two minutes, the Roman coliseum game levels had an inexplicable baseball diamond chalked in, and then in the final level the Phantom Virus is found in a batting cage.

Question: If you were to create a computer virus to scare away your rival why would you make it leave clues behind that clearly point in your direction?

Stray Observations:

• For a computer lab, this place had a surprising amount of beakers, test tubes and racks of chemicals, as well as radioactive enlarged tomatoes. Did the writers of this show not understand that “Computer Lab” does not mean mad scientist laboratory?
• The Phantom Virus taunts and laughs at our heroes in such a way that he kind of comes across like a cyber version of the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt.
• Daphne’s cheerleading skills help her defeat a Samurai from Level 6’s Feudal Japan. A nice change-up from the “Danger-Prone Daphne” of old.
• We get the standard gag where Scooby-Doo and Shaggy (Scott Innes) put on disguises to fool the villain, but then in a nice twist, we have Daphne (Grey Griffin) and her Cyber Version doing their own take on that trope.
• We get a music montage that covers six of the game’s ten levels that last just three minutes, because who would want to spend more time with creepy mummies, awesome dragons and shrunken settings? Me, that’s who!
• The last level of the game is so hard that Eric, who designed the bloody thing, has apparently never beaten it. This means Eric is a bit of a shit video game developer.
• It was nice to see some of the classic Scooby-Doo monsters making an appearance.

The Creeper is definitely scarier than the Phantom Virus.

Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase is beloved by many, but to me I found the “mystery game” framework to be rather lazy as if this movie was simply a 74-minute commercial for the actual video game, and then there is the bland colour palette and animation on display that doesn’t hold a candle to previous entries like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island or Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost. Now, there are some nice moments on hand, such as the aforementioned montage where we bounce quickly through six levels of the game, and if they had focused more on that stuff — leaving out the bulk of the lame Phantom Virus element — we could have had a really fun movie on our hands.

Note: There is a post-credits sequence that includes the gang telling the audience what their favourite parts of the movie were. I’d love to have seen a whole movie done in this art style.

You can find all my reviews of the various Scooby-Doo shows and movies collected here: The Wonderful World of Scooby-Doo.