In and of itself and strictly on its own terms, Scooby-Doo: Legend of the Phantosaur is a modestly entertaining lot of bosh that will neither set the world on fire nor tempt you into setting your own hair on fire out of boredom. It is what it is—another direct-to-video product featuring the legendarily popular Great Dane—and there is no use complaining about it. By this point, though, I find myself much less interested in another Scooby-Doo movie, and more intrigued by the idea of a Curb Your Enthusiasm story arc that had Larry David trying to pen a Scooby-Doo script, and going progressively mad(der) at the way a mediocre concept so far beneath his dignity can keep defeating his every attempt to write something good.
 For the record: The present movie has the Mysteries Inc. gang traveling to a small southwestern town and the paleontology dig therein. The reasons for this are hokey, though not in the traditional way: It turns out that Shaggy suffers from mumble-mumble-mumble syndrome which explains why he is such a fraidy cat, and his doctor has forbidden him from partaking in any more mystery investigations. There can't be anything spooky about a lot of dinosaur bones, can there?
Well, this particular lot comes complete with old legends about rampaging dinosaur spirits, and sure enough a giant glowing Allosaurus soon shows up and starts stomping all over the landscape. There aren't a lot of suspects to go around in this caper, and if you quickly peg the energy-extraction executives as the culprits, and posit an animatronic dinosaur as the device, then clearly you (along with movie scribe Doug Langdale) remember "A Scary Night with a Snow Beast Fright" from the series' 1978 season. This isn't a spoiler exactly, though, because not long after the mining company minions have been hustled off, another glowing dinosaur shows up. This time there are even fewer suspects to pick through, but I dare you to care one way or another. (But then, caring about who's under the mask has never been and never should be the point of a Scooby-Doo tale.)
Running behind and beneath things are two other stories. The lesser story has Velma falling in love with one of the paleontologists, which would be cute if their physical resemblance wasn't so close that the "clone" jokes actually tweak the squick meter. The more prominent side-story has Shaggy being sort-of-kind-of cured of his chicken-hearted condition, thanks to a hypnotic treatment that goes awry. As a consequence, he snaps into and out of a fearless tough-guy mode when anyone happens to say the magic word. (And no one knows what that magic word is.) This is where the movie is at its most puzzling, since I'm skeptical that those who like cartoons about the crime-solving canine are much interested in watching his beatnik buddy beat up a biker gang single-handedly, engage in a daring motorcycle death match, or save his friends from a cavern full of snakes. It is, I suppose, an interesting reversal on Shaggy's stereotype, but I always thought these things were supposed to be about ghosts and monsters and chases and things jumping out and going "Boo!"
 And there's much less of that kind of stuff here than you might want. There is an opening chase featuring some flying pirates, and two-and-a-half set-piece battles with one or the other of the "Phantosaurs." But otherwise it's just a lot of people talking or setting up plot situations. I think I'm less interested in dinosaurs than is this movie's target audience, but even I felt there was a serious shortage of dino action.
But it moves well and there are some good jokes (I particularly liked those involving a coffee-shop owner named Shakey Joe), and the actors (especially Fred Willard in support as a New Age nitwit) have energy and conviction. The music, except for a couple of forgettable pop songs on the soundtrack, also works.
I just wish the makers of these things would remember that Scooby-Doo began as a rip-off of the Abbott and Costello Meet ... genre of horror-comedies. Those movies worked (as the first Scooby series worked) because of the way they played the two genres against each other without resorting to irony or self-parody. It's probably a combination that is too hard to write these days—Transylvania and vaudeville both being dead—and that means kids will have to take their comfort where they can: In stories (like this one) whose authors have left a light odor of we're-too-good-for-this embarrassment drifting off them.
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