Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights (1994) (TV)

Directors:

Jun Falkenstein
Joanna Romersa

Release Date:

3 September 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Family | Mystery | Comedy

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Magilla Gorilla | Eyeglasses | Sinbad | Cross Dressing | Great Dane

Cast

Charles Adler	...	(voice)
Greg Burson	...	Yogi Bear (voice)
Brian Cummings
Eddie Deezen	...	Caliph (voice)
Paul Eiding
Jennifer Hale	...	Aliyah-din (voice)
Nick Jameson
Tony Jay
Casey Kasem	...	Shaggy (voice)
John Kassir	...	(voice)
Maurice LaMarche	...	(voice)
Allan Melvin	...	Sinbad / Magilla Gorilla (voice)
Don Messick	...	Scooby Doo / Boo Boo (voice)
Rob Paulsen	...	(voice)
Kath Soucie	...	(voice)
Frank Welker	...	Additional voices (voice)

Also Known As:

Arabian Nights (USA) (cable TV title)
Scooby Doo's Arabian Nights (USA)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Australia:G | Iceland:L

Company:

Hanna-Barbera Productions

Trivia:

This was the last Scooby-Doo cartoon to feature Don Messick as the voice of Scooby. Messick died in 1997 due to a stroke.

Movie Connections:

References Three Little Bops (1957)

Did this inspire "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue?!"

This is a re-write of my short, unhelpful comment on this movie.

Hanna-Barbera was well-known for its limited animation, catchy music, clever characters, classic sound effects, artistic styling, and more. Unfortunately, this is not present in this made-for-TV movie, "Arabian Nights." This appears to have been made to cash in on the success of Warner Bros. Animation's brilliant and funny cartoon series, "Animaniacs," which debuted the previous year, and "Tiny Toons" from four years ago. The animation is really crappy, for it appears to be attempt at doing "full" animation. Unfortunately, it comes out looking rather cheap. The characters are also designed rather poorly, and the backgrounds look ugly, too. Instead of the classic Hoyt Curtin-style music you are familiar with hearing on Hanna-Barbera cartoons, we get fully-orchestrated "Carl Stalling"-type score that has to match with every movement and action. In fact, it sounds a lot like the music in "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs". Similarly in audio, the classic Hanna-Barbera sound effects are rarely used in this movie. Even "Castle Thunder" is heard at only one part, all the other thunderclaps are newer digitally-recorded thunder sounds. And there is heavy use of the old Looney Tunes sound effects, which does not fit really well with H-B (which would become evident on "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Cow and Chicken".) The writing also seems like it was rather rushed. Despite a mis-leading video/DVD cover, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo are rarely featured in this movie. They only appear for ten minutes at the beginning, and for a couple of minutes in the middle and end. They are also drawn rather weird-looking here, too. I wonder if this could've been the inspiration for "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue?" There is also heavy use of running gags (predating "The Fairly Oddparents"), especially during the Sinbad segment. The jokes also seem to have been copied from "Animaniacs," "Tiny Toons" and the more-recent Disney movies of the time. The worst part of this movie is the "Ali-yah Din" segment, which appears to be a dumbed-down parody of Disney's "Aladdin." Yogi's constant pleading for food is pretty annoying in this movie. Similarly, the Golden Toothbrush sequence in the Sinbad story also seemed like a stupid idea. The scene with the high cliff in the Rhuk Egg sequence appears to be a rip-off of the old Wile E. Coyote and Road-Runner cartoons. Anyways, 1994 seems to have been the year that Hanna-Barbera finally went downhill. This cartoon was so bad, H-B stopped making new material featuring Scooby-Doo and Yogi Bear and Magilla Gorilla, until 1998 when H-B contracted Warner Bros. Animation to make new made-for-video Scooby-Doo movies. Some of them were much better than this, though "What's New, Scooby-Doo?" and "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!" are just as bad. Overall, this is practically the WORST HANNA-BARBERA CARTOON EVER MADE!