Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf is one of those bat-guano insane movies such as Small Soldiers or The Toxic Avenger.
Whoever made it seems unhinged. It seems cobbled together out of spare parts, like the outrageous jalopies it features. Not only do the film’s voodoo antics overstay their welcome, the continual fixation on racing drags. Nonetheless, it pulls off an awkward win in the end, as a fun call back to the animations of yesteryear.
Most likely, this project started life as a wacky racing movie and then someone at the studio said, “There’s nothing here. Put Scooby Doo in it” to get people interested. I cannot conceive how we got this plot in any other way. Shaggy is turned into a werewolf by Dracula and his only hope to be returned to normal is winning a race against the most well-known monster cliches. In keeping with the Halloween vibe of the show, we are treated to countless classic references and a host of horrendous puns. Shaggy brings Scooby Doo, Scrappy (who avoids the spotlight, thankfully) and his incredibly tolerant girlfriend, Googie, along for the literal ride. None of the rest of the gang is even mentioned, however Velma does voice Googie, so VelmaXShaggy fans rejoice.
The animation is fine, hand-drawn, with some quirky touches throughout, though there are too many reused frames and off-screen shortcuts. The plot is as repetitive as a normal Nascar event. The voice acting is appropriately over-the-top. Crunch and Brunch are some of the most annoying villains to grace the franchise. This movie in general is overpopulated by villains. So much screen time is devoted to Dracula and his skank Vana-Pira, that the viewer will probably forget it’s a Scooby Doo movie for large chunks of time. Shaggy and Scooby do not act like their normal selves, however. Their penchant for food is utilized a few times, but the two rush into danger rather than away from it.
The “draw” of this movie is the insane slapstick, rather than any inherent mystery. In Tom and Jerry fashion, anything and everything happens to the characters in this movie. In the most absurd ways, Dracula rigs his own race—the race he insisted Shaggy participate in— Sharks, magnets, freeze rays, trains, yowling cats, every possible cartoon trope is here. They threw every idea at this film. The result is a blobby, baggy, bloated, malformed monstrosity.
Does it make sense? No. It is a fever dream. The cars in this movie can do anything. They have springs on the bottom. They can sprout wings and fly in the last scene in the film (never before when that would’ve come in handy.) Shaggy is seen pressing the same red button to initiate every trap. It’s as if the car is reading his mind, so that it knows to lay down an oil slick or whatever when he presses the magic button. When they have a problem with a king kong knockoff attacking the car, they simply deploy the inbuilt oversized roller skates to trip the dastardly sapien up! That’s the whole movie in a sentence, folks.
While it’s kinda fun to see what they’ll pull out of left field next, the antics get tedious as the race for Shaggy’s return to non-furry status takes up 2/3 of the movie and runs out of gas about 15 minutes too early. Still, as a child, the repetitive cycle of the villains throwing something strange at Shaggy and crew only for them to counteract the attack with something even stranger never grew old. But I wonder if children now-a-days would have the same patience. Why was Dracula pathologically obsessed with getting Shaggy into this monster race, which Drac would only sabotage anyway? Why was Shaggy’s picture in an ancient grimoire, which predicted he would become a werewolf? Why was any of this necessary? What was Dracula’s motivation? Those were the real mysteries of the film.
If you enjoy watching old Hanna Barbera or Looney Tunes or enjoy so-bad-they’re-good movies, you might get something out of this. But there are better Scooby Doo films out there.
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