Friday night fight: ‘Scoob!’ versus the dogalypse

Above : The animated feature “Scoob!” opens on Friday. (Photo/Warner Bros.)

Movies have always been considered a kind of dream machine. A movie can make whatever we imagine unfold onscreen. Sometimes seamlessly. And sometimes not so much.

The best filmmakers can take the most clichéd storylines and make something fresh and original out of them. Others just follow in the same old formulas.

Movies that will open in the area’s mainstream theaters on Friday explore all sides of ends of the wish-fulfillment spectrum, from simple animated fantasy to a documentary feature that once again relates the story of the 20th-century’s greatest nightmare.

The first “Scoob!” is an animated feature starring the same basic crew that began its television run back in 1969 in the series “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” This time, our favorite talking Great Dane and his human pals  will try to stop a nefarious plot to release the ghost dog Cerberus on the world.

And if you’re wondering, the characters will now be voiced by the likes of Will Forte (Shaggy), Mark Wahlberg (Blue Falcon), Jason Isaacs (Dick Dastardly), Gina Rodriguez (Velma), Zac Efron (Fred), Amanda Seyfried (Daphne) and Frank Welker (Scooby-Doo).

Representing the critics who enjoyed the film, Katie Walsh of Tribune News Service wrote, “The other Hanna-Barbera characters that never quite achieved the cultural ubiquity of Scooby-Doo makes for a fun, universe-expanding tale, avoiding the cliches and story ruts that might otherwise befall yet another version of the Scooby-Doo story.”

Another opening film, “Dream Horse,” is a re-creation of a real story that stars Toni Collette and Damian Lewis. Collette plays Jan Vokes, a Welsh woman who, at the turn of the century, headed up a group from a small town that owned a racehorse named, aptly enough, Dream Alliance.

Wrote Leslie Felperin for the Hollywood Reporter, “Like horseracing, filmmaking is a high-risk gamblers’ game, but the team behind ‘Dream Horse,’ the resulting dramatization of the Vokes’ story, have surely bred a winner with this endearing, determinedly crowd-pleasing adaptation.”

A like-minded Dennis Harvey wrote this in Variety: “A well-cast, artfully handled effort that exercises sufficient restraint to really earn its requisite laughter and tears.”

In addition to those two films, AMC River Park Square will screen the documentary film “Final Account.” Directed by Luke Holland, the film is a collection of interviews with the last living generation who lived through Germany’s Third Reich.

Chris Barsanti, writing for Slant Magazine, wrote this: “Luke Holland’s stark and revealing documentary is a gift of memory to future generations, though it’s one that some will likely view as an unwelcome reminder of how everyday people can become complicit in incomprehensible evil.”

Finally, all three area Regal Theatres sites – at NorthTown Mall, Spokane Valley and Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone Stadium – will screen 2009’s “Fast & Furious” as part of Regal’s “Fast Friday” series.

That should be it … a bit of something for everyone.