Review of Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon

I didn't like the first WWE movie much at all, and this is certainly a step up in quality. We don't spend as much time getting into depth of clues and the mystery as I'd like, but there were plenty of red herrings and uncertainty in what was going on. The animation is solid, and the race sabotage is a classic setting that works well, a throwback to the What's New episode The Fast and the Wormious. The dialogue felt off and it doesn't feel like the gang is ever really together solving a mystery. Fred is presented as getting really into cars but then works on a car all night and sleeps through much of the action, ends up doing very little in the movie. This is a clear step backwards for Daphne as a well-realized and nuanced character, as she is presented as the traditional superficial Daphne of old. Her minor fights with Velma are silly and don't seem worthy of their screentime. Shaggy and Scooby definitely have the funny lines they always have (the bad toaster line and the accepting being called skinny man and dead meat were great) but several times their dialogue and animation looked a bit off. Shaggy was more of a scaredy caricature than usual (which says something), and in general they didn't quite have the energy I expect from them. We get introduced to a vast swath of WWE characters, and it ends up feeling like quantity over quality, as most are a one-dimensional caricature. It hits all the notes and feels like a regular Scooby movie, but I don't think it rises above a generic Scooby movie at any point, and the relative weakness of the gang's characters here keep it a 6 for me.