Scooby-Doo! in Arabian Nights (1994) – Review

In the history of Scooby-Doo movies, which does cover a lot of ground, Scooby-Doo! in Arabian Nights has two very key noteworthy points, number one being that this would be the last movie production to be produced by its original creators at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, afterwards, they would be produced by Warner Bros. Animation, and secondly, this is barely a Scooby-Doo movie as Scooby and Shaggy only appear in the short framing sequences as this entry is more of a Yogi Bear and Magilla Gorilla movie than it is a Scooby-Doo one.

This last of the Hanna-Barbera Scooby-Doo movies was loosely based on the Middle Eastern folk tales collected in the book One Thousand and One Arabian Nights but where in the book, Scheherazade told numerous tales to stave off her execution, in this television special we have Shaggy in drag as a harem girl telling only two stories to the Caliph in the hope that he will fall asleep so that he and Scooby can escape.  So what we have here is not so much One Thousand and One Arabian Nights but something more akin to One Arabian Nap. The basic set-up to this television special deals with Shaggy (Casey Kasem) and Scooby-Doo (Don Messick) arriving in Arabia via magic carpet to apply for the job of royal food taster and because this is Shaggy and Scooby they misunderstand the point of this job, that it is to “taste test” for poison and not eat the entire meal, which infuriates the Royal Chef (Greg Burson) and angers the Caliph (Eddie Deezen) to the point where he orders his guards to kill them.

“Could, like, someone call Fred, Daphne or Velma?”

This is when the “anthology” part kicks in with Shaggy and Scooby fleeing for their lives, and our intrepid beatnik is forced to disguise himself as a harem girl to save his neck, unfortunately, the Caliph had also been looking for a bride and immediately falls in love with the disguised Shaggy and decides that they shall be married, and this leads to Shaggy telling him “classic tales” that with any luck will put the Caliph to sleep and allow them to escape, of course, the only danger here is putting any older viewers to sleep because the two following tales are less than engaging and not all that funny. The first offering is a new take on the story of Aladdin, and while not actually part of the original book of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights it is probably one of the best-known tales, but the people over at Hanna-Barbera aren’t just pilfering classic stories for their cartoon they also pilfer the hell out of Disney’s 1992 Aladdin as many elements found here are from the Disney version, only in this outing instead of Robin Williams as the Genie we get Yogi Bear.

“I’m smarter than your average genie.”

The only real interesting thing about this take on Aladdin is that they gender-swap the title character so instead of a male street rat named Aladdin we have a young woman named Aliyah-Din (Jennifer Hale) who is “Pure of Heart” and the only one who can enter the “Cave of Wonders” to retrieve the magic lamp for the evil Vizier (John Kassir), who of course wants to use the lamp to overthrow the Sultan (Brian Cummings) but of course, things go wrong, such as Aliyah-Din picking up unlicensed treasure while in the cave, which causes the Vizier goes to plan “B” and drugs the Sultan, puts the Prince (Rob Paulsen) under a spell and then drags him down to dungeons before taking on the Prince’s appearance. Meanwhile, back at the Cave of Wonders, Aliyah-Din finds and rubs the lamp which releases the Genie/Yogi Bear (Greg Burson) and his sidekick Boo-Boo (Don Messick), a Genie-in-training, who reveals to Aliyah-Din that she is their new master and that they are allowed to grant her three wishes. What follows should be familiar to all of you, Aliyah-Din wishing to be a Princess and the Grand Vizier getting a hold of the lamp and wishing for ultimate power, all the while being peppered with the standard Yogi Bear being obsessed with food jokes.

“How would you like a pic-a-nic basket?”

Aside from the aforementioned gender swap, there is nothing to be found in this version of Aladdin that is all that noteworthy, but at least it’s short enough that one doesn’t really have enough time to get bored, the same cannot be said of the next tale offered by Shaggy, which is that of Sinbad the Sailor, being played by Magilla Gorilla (Allan Melvin) as a simple-minded goof who mistakes a pirate ship for a cruise ship, and the maniacal little pirate captain (Charlie Adler) takes advantage of Magilla’s naivete by pretending to be a Cruise Director and tries to pass off various thefts as being part of a scavenger hunt, needless to say, this is incredibly dumb and comes across more like a bad Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam cartoon and nothing like a Magilla Gorilla one, or a Sinbad the Sailor tale for that matter, which is what this cartoon was supposedly trying to parody. Aside from the appearance of the legendary Roc and them trying to steal a golden toothbrush from a hygiene-obsessed cyclops there really isn’t much on display that could make anyone mistake this for a Sinbad story from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and it’s all rather forgettable and unfunny.

The writers were clearly between a Roc and a hard place.

Stray Observations:

• As Shaggy and Scooby only exist as a framing device there is no mystery-solving theme, something that the franchise was famous for, instead, what we get is a lame Yogi Bear cartoon and an even lamer Magilla Gorilla adventure.
• One element that does survive is Shaggy and Scooby dressing up in some form of disguise to outwit their current nemesis, sadly, it is not to fool a ghost or monster just an idiot Caliph.
• As we pan across the Caliph’s harem, we see one of the harem girls reading the book One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Can we assume this Scheherazade and that Shaggy and Scooby’s shenanigans earned her a night off?
• No explanation is given as to why most of the people in this movie are depicted as somewhat Arabic-looking while the Caliph is decidedly white and looks and sounds like Eddie Deezen.
• Aliyah-Din runs off when she sees the Prince watching her, leaving her scarf behind, and the Prince then begins the search for his one true love, which left me wondering if the writers of this show understood how the story of Cinderella worked.
• Boo-Boo makes all the candidates for the Prince’s hand vanish in a cute lift from Disney’s Mary Poppins, where in that film she blew away all the prospective nannies with a strong wind.
• To reach the nest of the Roc, Magilla, aka Sinbad the Sailor, simply walks up a sheer cliff face, and I think the writers have mistaken the abilities of a gorilla with that of a spider.
• Later, when stealing the Golden Toothbrush, Magilla is unable to scale a similar cliff face and I think we’ve mistaken the people behind this thing for being writers of any kind.
• Not satisfied with just ripping off Disney movies the writers of this thing have our characters take a trip through a knock-off version of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

“We pillage plunder, we rifle and loot, a writer’s life for me!”

Not only was this Scooby-Doo outing very disappointing – and not just for the lack of Scooby-Doo – it was also the last time Don Messick would voice Scooby due to his death in 1997 and that is a sour note for such a great voice actor to go out on, but what is more disheartening is that Scooby-Doo! in Arabian Nights it ended the run that included Boo Brothers, Ghoul School and The Reluctant Werewolf and its flat animation style failed to properly capture what a tale from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights should have strived for, in conclusion, this last of the Hanna-Barbera Scooby-Doo productions was a sad swan song that is best forgotten, but at least it did make way for offerings from Warner Bros. Animation and Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.

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