Originally published at: Jinkies! Velma got an Honest Trailer from Screen Junkies | Boing Boing
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I haven’t yet learned if the criticism of Velma has been due to actual, honest, thoughtful reviews, or to the seemingly endless barrage of shit from the racist, homophobic, misogynistic morons that seem to revel in dogpiling on any film with a woman or LGBTQ person in the leading role (or god forbid both!)
And I absolutely love The Venture Brothers, Archer, Bird Girl, and others from the old-cartoon-adjacent movies genre. So I still have it on my watch list.
But this review isn’t helping move it up any notches.
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Mindy Kaling is one of those people that I want to find funny, and I’ve watched a few of her things, but after a while I realised that she’s never actually made me laugh.
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I keep reading about how the show has no respect for its source material, etc. and doesn’t have the dog. And then I remember that I hated the original show, especially the dog.
So there you are. Not sure if that means I should watch it, or can just ignore it. I don’t have much invested in Scooby-hate or Mindy-love.
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Apparently Hanna Barbera wouldn’t let them have the dog.
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I think she’s hilarious, but Velma is just a terrible show. It’s entire shtick is being savvy and self-aware, but all the jokes are easy, formulaic, and predictable. On top of that, it feels like it was written in 2011, then touched up for production in 2022.
Overall, it’s like someone put peanut butter, Cabernet, a ribeye, and a block of good English cheddar into blender. All of the ingredients sound incredible, but the outcome is horrendous.
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That trailer (especially the parody theme song) was WAY more entertaining than the four eps of the series that I was able to watch before finally calling it a lost cause.
As someone who doesn’t particularly like the Venture Bros or Rick & Morty kind of humor, this show wouldn’t have resonated with me even if the ‘jokes’ weren’t trite and half assed.
It’s not bad because it’s “too woke”; it’s bad because the writing is lazy a/f and seems to stem from an innate dislike of the source material that’s damn near malicious.
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I enjoyed Velma. It got better as it went on. I’ve said this elsewhere but I’ll say it again, it feels like it came out a decade or so too late. This would have been perfect on Adult Swim when Gen X and Millennials were looking for edgy referential stuff. Imagine this airing alongside the early years of Robot Chicken.
It’s ok that they tried and apparently failed with this one. There’s still so much better Scooby content out there that this won’t hurt it. Chase this one down with an episode of Mystery Incorporated and call it a day. Or watch Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost if you want to be impressed by their attempt at canonizing 13 Ghosts with the main series.
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Now that the season has ended I can say that I was really worried at one point that we were going to find out that Scooby had a human brain implanted in him, explaining his personality. Then I spent the rest of the season trying to guess who’s…
Spoiler blur for a thing that did not happen, but could have. And I guess still could. Did they get renewed?
Overall there were a few funny bits, but everything was very ham fisted. It is definitely not a Venture Bros, Harvey Birdman (or the new Bird Girl, which is often quite good) level. Its…fine
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I suspected the same thing. Maybe it was too obvious of a road to go down.
Renewed? I heard it was a two season deal. Wikipedia (which isn’t true confirmation) says a second season is already in development.
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Ah, I had not really been following closely. That said, I imagine that I will probably watch it to, like I did this season - out of curiousity, to see what they do with it. I guess, thinking about it, what put me off of it was a mean spiritedness that I did not feel jelled with my idea of the characters. Which is weird, because I like a lot of mean spirited things
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Yeah, but this is a meanspirited take on a franchise that’s had next to no real edge to it for over 50 years. It’s never going to feel right, even when the humor actually hits.
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Yeah. Meanspirited is a good word for it. I went in hoping it would be better than the reviews. That is what struck me… like mean-ness was a substitute for edginess. I feel like that’s the go-to of bad comedy. Instead of witty subversive commentary they just make fun of people - either making the characters mean or making the characters the butt of jokes for no real reason. None of the characters felt like-able to me. Especially the lead characters.
I did only watch one episode… maybe it could get better? But dang. That first one was so painful I could barely finish it.
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I watched the whole first season. It was ok.
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“Or so I hear from a friend.”
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I wanted to like it but oh man it was so bad. It was so confusing in who it was for. Really it does seem a case it was a big FU to the audience.
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There’s a reason I really didn’t like the first season of the Office. It was mean. Michael Scott was an asshole in that first season. The same goes for many of the beloved adult cartoons of others, like South Park. And the sense I got from watching part of one episode of Velma and hearing endless critiques, including this Honest Trailer, was it was VERY mean. That’s not something I enjoy watching (along with comedy based on people being totally stupid).
Give me The Good Place, or Ted Lasso, or Parks & Recreation.
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Velma wasn’t bad because it was a shit version of Scooby Doo, it was terrible because it was a shit version of Daria. Kaling really doesn’t have the voice-acting chops to pull off repeated monologuing and asides to the camera, and the social insight was nowhere near as deep as they were going for.
It wasn’t as unwatchable as the review-bombers were making it out to be, but a poorly executed version of a mediocre license is never going to be particularly special. I watched the finale of the first series, I have no interest in watching a second.
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It’s just awful. I was the same, “is this just getting 4chan hate from boys who want to lash out at egalitarianism?” Sadly, no, it’s just not funny and the attempts at cultural commentary are at best bland, more often completely nonsensical. The single most consistent criticism is I think the most valid, it’s a mean show. Mean to the source material, mean to the characters, mean to the audience.
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That right there has been my main problem relating to all things Scooby Doo: I never liked it, even before they introduced Scrappy Doo. If I recall correctly I always changed the dial to watch Bugs Bunny Road Runner, or Isis/Shazam, or the animated Star Trek, or Super Friends, anything other than a Hannah Barbera cartoon.
So I am not the sort of person who would like a Velma movie, but I do like Honest Trailers. So I chuckled and enjoyed what I saw.
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