Scooby-Doo (Widescreen Edition)

"I would've gotten away with it if weren't for you meddling kids!" Equal parts remake and spoof, this tongue-in-cheek live-action resurrection finds the old Saturday-morning-cartoon gang reunited to investigate the zombie teens of a haunted amusement park. Frantic action and big-screen special effects stand in for logic, but for a while it makes for a spirited send-up. Freddie Prinze Jr., under a blond hairdo and an ascot, turns Fred into a preening pretty boy, and Sarah Michelle Gellar plays with her own Buffy image as eternal damsel-in-distress Daphne (in magenta mini-dress and maxi-boots, no less), but this show belongs to gangly Matthew Lillard, who is the adenoidal beatnik Shaggy. His loyal-to-the-end friendship with the computer-animated Scooby-Doo is the most convincing relationship in the whole two-dimensional goof. Some of the supernatural nasties may be scary for young kids and the humor careens from winking self-awareness to Scooby doo-doo gags, but otherwise this is as harmless as a Saturday-morning chapter and as substantial as a Scooby snack. --Sean Axmaker