SCOOBY DOO & BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD (2018)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


Though as an adult I've come to respect the Scooby-Doo franchise more than I did as a kid-- if only for its sheer persistence-- it stings a bit to see the talking Great Dane get top billing over Batman. I suppose I can take refuge in the fact that this DTV film wouldn't even exist if not for the durability of the mystery-solving mutt, and that the Batman here is the "hip humor" version who appeared in the TV cartoon BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, a series that finished up in 2011.

I call the protagonist of the BRAVE AND BOLD series "hip humor" to distinguish from the "camp" aesthetic of the 1966 BATMAN teleseries. In camp, it's important that none of the characters, particularly the principals, should be aware of the absurdities they encounter. "Hip humor," in contrast, usually does have one or more characters who are acutely aware of the weirdness of their worlds. The Batman of the BRAVE AND BOLD teleseries sometimes resembles the campy Batman of the live-action series, but the former delivers his oddball lines with a deadpan air that suggests the knowing-ness of the hip humor-character:

What is this now, the fifth or sixth deathtrap I've been tied up to because of you over the years?

...you left the school before learning Wong Fei's most important lesson: when outmatched, cheat

 Sorry. Crime doesn't take dinner breaks and neither do I.

The teleseries loosely followed the template of DC's team-up title, which, for most of its existence, placed Batman into temporary partnerships with almost every "guest-hero" available from the DC roster. The comic book was nominally serious in tone, but not infrequently, the writers did attempt a sort of hip humor, though it's questionable as to whether they succeeded. More, a lot of fans remember the title best for its preponderance of wacky improbabilities, which also happens to be the way fans tend to think of Silver Age DC as a whole. Often the improbability stemmed just from the idea of the Caped Crusader being teamed up with characters who just didn't seem to belong to the same universe, ranging from World War II hero Sergeant Rock to the futuristic Legion of Super-Heroes. The 2008-2011 cartoon show exploited those incongruities with a "retro" artistic approach, hearkening back to the Batman comics of the early Silver Age, which often pitted the hero against flamboyant gimmick-villains like Clayface II and the Polka Dot Man.

However, the producers of SCOOBY/B&B, while trying to emulate some of the aesthetic of the cancelled teleseries, were clearly required to slant the humor not toward hipster loopiness, but toward the prevailing type of humor of the Scooby franchise. Over the years that franchise occasionally toyed with hip humor, but by and large the approach has stuck with what worked in the Hanna-Barbera original: baggy-pants burlesque and slapstick.

This wasn't a big problem when the Scooby Gang crossed over with other franchises in other DTV flicks, such as 2014's WRESTLEMANIA MYSTERY and 2015's ROCK AND ROLL MYSTERY. But in both of these, there wasn't a lot of mythology to the guest-stars-- respectively, the wrestlers of the WWE and the rock-group Kiss-- and so it didn't really hurt those guest-stars to play in Scooby's sandbox.

The writers of BRAVE AND SCOOBY try mightily to make B&B''s "hip humor" style jibe with the Hanna-Barbera baggy-pants style, but the attempt rarely succeeds. Perhaps one of the few bits that works is a scene in which Velma Dinkley attempts to out-detect one of DC's goofier sleuths, Detective Chimp. I can appreciate the Silver Age flashback when Batman invites the Scooby Gang to join his sleuth-group "the Mystery Analysts." In the comics this was a group of mundane amateur detectives who helped Batman solve crimes, but for the purpose of B&B, it's just an excuse to convene some of the favorite guest-stars from the teleseries: the Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man, Black Canary, and the Question-- none of whom are particularly associated with mystery-solving. (Aquaman, even less associated with sleuthing, deals himself into the plot, mostly because the show's "Richard Harris" take on the character was a fan-favorite.)

And the plot? It's a pretty forgettable schtick about solving the one case Batman himself couldn't solve, involving a scientist who disappeared into another dimension. There's also a mysterious spectre, the better to fulfill the ghost-hunting part of the Scoobies' resume. A few other Bat-villains are also added to the mix, resulting in too many crooks-- and too many crook-catchers-- spoiling the whole soup.

It's mostly interesting as a failed experiment, and, in my case, as a challenge for categorization, since the "adventure" theme of BRAVE AND BOLD is here overruled by the "comedy" theme of SCOOBY, though there's enough heroic action that the whole thing registers as combative with me.