Ghost Dinosaurs? Zoinks!
Legend of the Phantosaur begins with Shaggy yelling in the hospital. Apparently, on the team’s last case, he was scared pretty good, which is not uncommon for Shaggy. But, his doctor tells him he has a condition that makes him more anxious and afraid about things than normal people, and he’s told to relax and is even restricted from being in the Mystery Van.
In trying to help, Daphne’s suggests a trip to La Serena, a new spa that is opening up. The team hops in the newly named Mustard Van and heads to the southwest to find some serenity. Unfortunately, a mystery pops up before long when they start hearing things about a legendary phantom dinosaur. There is also some interesting issues with land ownership; a mining company believes silver is on the land and they want to get the rights, but an dig team is also on site uncovering dinosaur bones.
Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby start meddling around and soon begin to unravel a multi-layered mystery. Along the way, Shaggy undergoes a hypnosis treatment that makes him incredibly fearless whenever someone utters the word ‘bad’ around him. This gets him into some pretty funny situations, including squaring off against a team of bikers at a small diner in the middle of nowhere.
The writers did a nice job with the plot, offering several intertwined mysteries and keeping a great pace throughout. While intended for a younger audience, I enjoyed this movie more than I expected to.
The animation is also superb, and the image quality is gorgeous on Blu-ray. DTS-HD 5.1 audio adds nicely to the experience as well. There is just a single extra feature, Searching For Phantosaurs. It runs thirteen minutes and thirty-four seconds, and is in HD. It stars Nick Palatas, who plays Shaggy in the live action Scooby movies. He visits the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History and learns a lot about the process of locating dinosaur remains and working with fossils; it’s a nicely produced, kid-focused edutainment extra feature.
With that, let’s get to the summary…