Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights (1994 TV Movie) User Reviews (7)

The worst Scooby Doo movie ever? Probably

[TheLittleSongbird · 2/10 · 23 June 2010]

I am really sorry guys, but I didn't like this film at all. I love Hanna Barbera and I love Scooby Doo, but this movie was not great at all. In fact a vast majority was awful in my opinion, which is a real shame as I genuinely wanted to like this movie. You see it had so much promise, Shaggy, Scooby, Yogi Bear, these are all great characters, the concept was good, the voice cast is of high calibre and the trailer actually looked as though it was going to be a half-decent movie.

So were there any redeeming qualities? The music score was very energetic and rousing and did have a sense of authenticity, almost like a Carl Stalling score in those great Looney Tunes cartoons. Plus it was a delight to see all those characters.

However, these characters deserved much better. Shaggy and Scooby are both woefully underused and Yogi is saddled with very lacklustre material. And the other characters? The girl who the prince falls in love with is poorly drawn while the villain is little more than a stereotype and a blatant rip-off of Jafar with a bit of Dick Dastardly in his design too.

That's not all that's wrong with this film. The animation is shoddy, with wonkily drawn characters, rushed backgrounds, flat colouring and all-over-the place editing. The dialogue is unfunny and forced, the sight gags are unoriginal, the pacing is both rushed and pedestrian, the sound effects are misplaced and the story is just a gender-reversed tale of Aladdin except one that starts off on the wrong foot and never recovers while the segments about pirates and Shaggy disguising himself as a princess are pretty lacking in originality or entertainment too and the parts telling Caliph telling the stories isn't exactly unfamiliar territory, see 1001 Rabbit Tales, it's not perfect but the links and the stories told are much more amusing(in my opinion that is). Plus I am afraid to say the voice work was poor, even with Casey Kasem and Don Messick who were given little worthwhile to work with.

So overall, hugely disappointing and a failure of what happened to be a good idea. 2/10 Bethany Cox

much better than I hoped for

[gventola · 31 August 2002]

A Hanna-Barbera fan, I rented this movie, but thought it was going to be "lame-o". It can get rather disinteresting, these type of stories where they take a familiar tale, and put characters familiar from another source in the roles. You know, like all those sitcom cast retellings of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Actually, the film turned out to be quite fun. Shaggy (in drag) has to tell stories to a prince, who sounds exactly like Mandark from "Dexter's Laboratory", which amused me. One story is a gender-reversed version of "Aladdin", with a girl named Aliyah-Din as the poor heroine who must win her royal man. Despite the presence of Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo as genies, the story can actually be taken pretty seriously. Then Magilla Gorilla stars as Sinbad, in a hilarious parody which includes a surprising send-up of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride! As a Disney theme park fan, I was howling with laughter!

Different than your average Scooby-Doo! adventure...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 19 September 2022]

I had never seen nor heard of the 1994 animated movie "Scooby-Doo In Arabian Nights". So as I stumbled upon it by random chance here in 2022, of course I opted to sit down and watch it. And I did so with my 12 year old son, as we both enjoy the "Scooby-Doo!" adventures.

Writers Gordon Kent and Glenn Leopold didn't deliver the archetypical "Scooby-Doo!" adventure here with this 1994 animated movie. Nay, instead we are treated to an animated telling of "Aladdin" and "Sinbad" that stars Yogi Bear and Boo Boo in the "Aladdin" tale and Magilla Gorilla in the "Sinbad" tale. And Scooby-Doo and Shaggy are only parts of the narrative in between the two tales.

So it was a somewhat disappointing movie experience, especially if you expect it to be a full-blown "Scooby-Doo!" adventure. But hey, at least my son seemed to enjoy this.

The art and animation in "Scooby-Doo In Arabian Nights" is good, and of that archetypical and recognizable Hanna-Barbera style that we all know and love from the "Scooby-Doo!" adventures. So there was at least that sense of familiarity and comfort to this.

The voice acting in "Scooby-Doo In Arabian Nights" was good.

My rating of "Scooby-Doo In Arabian Nights" lands on a three out of ten stars, as this was definitely not what I was expecting.

One of Hanna-Barbera's biggest failures ever

[wile_E2005 · 1/10 · 7 January 2005]

This is a re-write of my short, unhelpful review on this movie, as written in August 2010.

Now, Hanna-Barbera was known for clever cartoons that made up for its limited animation by featuring funny characterizations and sight gags, witty stories, catchy background music, zany sound effects and excellent voice work. During the early-to-mid 1990s, however, they began to struggle before they began producing original material for Cartoon Network, having fallen behind by its new competition (Disney and WB's TV animation studios, as well as the Nicktoons). Some of their 1990s stuff was good ("Tom & Jerry Kids," "The Halloween Tree"), and some of it was bad. This movie is, unfortunately, one of their worst productions ever.

I had high hopes for this movie. It had a pretty good-looking voice cast (with Casey Kasem and Don Messick voicing Shaggy and Scooby, and also featuring many other talented voice actors like Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Tony Jay, Jennifer Hale, Kath Soucie, Frank Welker. etc.), and the video cover artwork made the plot look interesting, but I turned out to be deceived. The plot was very weak; Shaggy and Scooby-Doo were only in 15 minutes out of the film's 70-minute running time. Shaggy just tells stories to the nerdy Caliph (a precursor to Mandark of "Dexter's Lab"), and there is virtually no indication that these are stories he is telling. So it pretty much segues into another cartoon. The "Aliyah-Din" story is pretty much a no-brainer parody of Disney's "Aladdin" with the genders reversed to make it less obvious, and many of the characterizations and gags are unoriginal and seemed ripped off of other cartoons (especially anything made by Disney or WB); for example, Haman is an obvious rip- off of Jafar (with a bit of Dick Dastardly thrown into his design too). Yogi's running gag where he keeps hoping for food gets annoying after ten minutes, too. The soundtrack is also poor. Regarding the music, while I am usually a fan of the Carl Stalling-esquire style (as composed by "Animaniacs" composer Steve Bernstein), just doesn't work with this movie; it's always stopping and starting, moving with every knee jerk or double take, etc. I don't mind hearing this on a "Tiny Toon Adventures" or "Animaniacs" segment (great shows BTW), but here it just sounds out of place. The sound effects are also pretty much out of place, as the cartoon does not use Hanna-Barbera's famous sound FX that often, instead mostly opting for the old Treg Brown/Looney Tunes sound effects. And just as bad is the animation. It is actually very poor, even for 1994 standards! Character designs are rather wonky-looking, the backgrounds are over-stylized, even Shaggy and Scooby look strangely off-model! And the movements are pretty jerky and remind me of some of the worst early "Tiny Toons" animation (but without the crappy computer system used here), and there are a lot of cheap-looking digital pan and zooms that could make you nauseous.

Overall, this was one of Hanna-Barbera's worst cartoons ever from one of their worst periods ever, period. This was pretty much their equivalent to "Titanic: The Animated Musical." Even my YouTube Poop of this movie is better than the real thing! (Check it out if you get the chance to, it will save you the trouble from watching the real thing!)

Scam

[nickscheetz · 2/10 · 29 November 2019]

When I first came across this movie I was admittedly intrigued. I assumed that Scooby Doo was dead in the 90's because of Scrappy Doo, seeing a movie that premiered in 1994 made me curious. Being a huge Scooby Doo fan I decided to check it out, it has a promising start with Shaggy and Scooby going to Arabia to apply for jobs as royal food tasters, but after they eat a prince's royal feast not knowing the point of their jobs was to make sure nothing was poisoned they get in trouble. You would probably think this is what the movie's about, Shag and Scoob getting into whacky antics in Arabia and trying to make everything better at the end, but no, instead after disguising himself as a woman whom the prince without his glasses assumes is supposed to be his bride Shaggy decides to tell him a story to make him fall asleep so him and Scooby can escape. The rest of the movie is 2 different cartoons that might as well be their own specials, the first being a gender-bent parody of Aladdin with Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo as the genie and the second being the story of Sinbad with Magilla Gorilla as the title character, you see the problem yet? Shaggy and Scooby are barely in the movie outside of the opening and the ending even though they're both on the cover of the VHS case and the title is "Scooby Doo in Arabia Nights." The movie is just a big fat lie, it should've been called "Hannah-Barbera in Arabian Nights" which is probably why when the title appears in the movie it just says "Arabian Nights", perhaps it wasn't supposed to be a Scooby Doo movie. But as is it's a scam, I would've really liked this movie if the focus was primarily on Shaggy and Scooby instead of an hour of filler with 2 pointless cartoons that should've been their own specials which is the only solution to fixing the movie that I can think of at this rate.

Unwatchable Aladdin Rip-off

[Aegelis · 1/10 · 8 June 2022]

There are a lot of excellent Scooby movies, but this is a plagiarized Disney Aladdin film blended with Bugs Bunny 1001 Rabbit Tales and Hanna Barbera characters sprinkled in. No mystery machine, no gang, no mystery to be solved. Steaming pile hot mess, I couldn't watch it all because I'd seen it before. Unimaginative waste of a half hour.

So bad it's good

[Somenerd23 · 7/10 · 2 February 2023]

This movie is the most insane thing you will ever watch. If you go this movie expecting a good Scooby Doo movie you will be sorely mistaken when most of it isn't about Scooby doo. If you are interesting in watching something insane or want something to make fun of this movie is going to be fantastic. This is a mix of stories and advertisements to watch other Hannah Barbara properties. If you want something good then go somewhere else but it's an hour long and if you enjoy making fun of an absurd, campy, utterly insane scooby doo movie, this is a good choice. It's the scooby doo version of Ratatoing.