Tag Archives: WWE

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

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All right, time for one of the latest Scooby Doo adventures. The first WWE adventure was actually pretty fun. I’ll take any excuse to throw in some fight scenes to the classic Scooby Doo formula you know? The problem is that this one takes the wrestling out of the WWE for the most part as it tries to be a racing film. That’s a verrrrrrry odd strategy if you ask me and it really didn’t make any sense. Sure, we still had some fights, but not as many as you would expect. The writing is a clear step under the last few films, but it’s still a reasonably enjoyable film.

Shaggy and Scooby have finally realized their dream of owning a burger joint. Now they can take customer orders and then eat the burgers instead of serving them. They’re still in business somehow, but hey…that just shows how strong the economy is at the moment right? Their favorite wrestler is the Undertaker and they’re rooting for him to win it all. Unfortunately, his partner was attacked by a mysterious foe and now they will have to take part in the race since Undertaker needs a partner. Can they win the race and stop this interloper or are they completely doomed?

I have to give myself numerous pats on the back here as I correctly guessed who was the villain within the first 10 minutes of the film. I don’t like to brag, but I just have that knack for this kind of thing. The person seemed rather suspect. Not in an obvious red herring way, but in a more legitimate fashion. Lets talk about the suspects. There is Undertaker and his sidekick. The sidekick may be doing this to make Undertaker look good and this is a nice way of taking out the competition. There’s the Russian team who may be using this as a way to undermine American confidence in racing. There’s the All American hero who loves messing with his hair and his tough female co-rider. They bicker a lot, but it could be an act. There’s the crazy twins who can teleport and throw dust at their opponents. They’re clearly not ordinary humans so they could have a stake in this. There’s the daughter of the president of the company who enters against his wishes along with her partner so they’re suspect. Finally, there’s the president who always wanders away right when the ghost shows up. Suspicious? Not at all! He makes it way too obvious to be suspicious.

There are quite a lot of suspects here and the cool thing is that most of these characters are real so that ups the stakes. Can you picture these celebrities actually doing this? Although if you’re a Pro Wrestler I suppose you’re used to acting. The actual race isn’t bad as anything goes so all of the cars work on bumping each other out of the way. There aren’t a whole lot of gimmicks to most of the cars, but Fred built Undertaker one that has rocket boosters so that helped to give him a bit of an edge. Not to mention that he could eat on the go with the original food truck. 3 day races like this are always interesting since the first 2 days barely matter since the winner of the final stretch takes it all anyway.

Before I talk about some of the negatives, lets keep on talking about the strengths to get them out of the way. One thing I really liked here was that the “civilians” actually fought back. Usually everyone just runs away from the ghost in a Scooby Doo film even if he/she isn’t all that threatening. That’s not the case here. One guy sees the ghost approaching and actually decides to hide behind a pickup truck to plan his attack and then launches at the guy. He actually puts up a really good fight even if he ended up being defeated instead. Likewise, nobody cowers at the sight of the villain aside from Shaggy and Scooby and I loved this change of pace. Imagine how awesome it would be if this became the norm.

The animation is as good as always. The Scooby Doo formula is certainly written in stone at this point and animated as such. I don’t think they need to worry about switching up the style because it just works so well. Unfortunately, there aren’t really any good music themes this time. The main theme was pretty solid I suppose, but we only got to see it very briefly. The writing is fairly bad though and that takes us into the negatives.

This first one may not really be the film in particular, but I have to address it. Shaggy and Scooby get more and more annoying with every film that passes by. I can’t really say that their antics are funny and they are easily the worst members of the Mystery Gang. I wish they wouldn’t be so scared all of the time and they’re very over the top. How can the Undertaker be their favorite wrestler if they’re completely terrified of him? The whole thing just doesn’t make any sense. Their food gimmick is good, but that’s where the buck stops at this point and the rest of their character is just sad.

Next, the characters are too gimmicky in this film. Every character is extremely exaggerated like the Russian guy or the American who was focused on his hair, but actually wasn’t very tough in the end. They’re all caricature at this point instead of real characters. Most films have quirky characters of course, but you have to do it with some tact in order to be really effective. The twins with the dust were just as bad as they were constantly waving their arms around and talking nonsense. I can’t picture their fans being very thrilled about their portrayal because it was just pretty disappointing on the whole. There were very few reasonable characters in this film.

It also reused the Daphne/Velma plot for what must be the 6th or 7th time at this point. Daphne gets a new friend so Velma gets jealous, but the new friend turns out to be shallow so they become buddies again. It’s a really old plot at this point and shows that they’re running out of ideas. At least the ghost was cool though. I mean, he barely even pretended to be a ghost this time around, but a physical opponent makes sense so the heroes have something to fight. The design was good and he was decently formidable so that was satisfying.

Overall, This film was a bit of a step down from the last few Scooby Doo films and just most of them in general. The positives are quite good at least like the fact that we got actual fight scenes. They weren’t as solid as the first WWE film, but they were still fun and that’s why I want more WWE films. We just need to focus on the wrestling and the fighting instead of trying to throw in races and all of that. Also, where was John Cena? I was really surprised that he wasn’t in the film as that seemed like a no brainer. If you’re a big Scooby Doo fan then you should check this out, but otherwise the first WWE film is just better in every way. It’s a better way to start off with the series. I expect the series to make a recovery with the next one.

Overall 6/10

Jingle All the Way 2 Review

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It’s time to look at the sequel that nobody even knows about. The original Jingle All the Way is classic at this point, but the sequel has been overlooked time and time again. At this point, a third film is unlikely to come out anytime soon. It’s definitely not a bad film and I thought that it was entertaining enough, but it certainly is a step down over the last film. You can tell right away that this wasn’t a theater film and the soundtrack isn’t quite as good. You can draw a lot of similarities between this and Home Alone 4, but the ending is much better here.

It is almost Christmas time and Larry wants to give his daughter Noel the best Christmas ever. The problem is that her new Step-Dad please wants to have her over for Christmas. The official system is that she switches between them every year as they alternate days, but the step Dad pulls rank. The compromise is that Larry will have her for the first half and will then bring her back over for the second half. In the week leading up to Christmas, he now has to really show Victor up. He steals her letter to Santa, where Noel asks for a super cool Teddy Bear. Larry knows what he has to do but Victor won’t make it easy.

Once again, it’s one of those cases where the contrast between the two Dads is probably exaggerated a little too much. Larry has let himself go since the marriage fell apart and now he’s super overweight. He’s not very smart and economically he isn’t doing well either. He attempts to impress Noel by connecting his car lights to the Christmas ones, but ends up losing all of his electricity so they can’t bake cookies or even have a proper breakfast. They have to settle for cereal. Larry’s a nice and likable guy, but it’s clear who we are supposed to think will give Noel a better Christmas when it comes to material goods. What works in Larry’s favor is that he has no real responsibilities and can just hang out with Noel all day. They go sledding, ice fishing, and do all kinds of stuff. Larry’s super laid back and relaxed as well with a charismatic personality so it’s easy to see why he’s fun to be around.

One thing that really hurts Larry’s case though is the fact that he’s always taking cheap shots at Victor. You never see Victor insulting Larry, but whenever Larry sees something that he can use against Victor, he takes it. “I bet Victor’s food isn’t this good right Noel?” “I bet Victor’s no fun” and he takes shots at Victor throughout the entire film. Naturally, the writers make sure that Victor jumps over the fence in the last part of the film, but otherwise, it’s hard not to be in his corner right from the start. Also, Larry cheats at games.

Sleigh bells ring…are you listening? Odds are that you’re not if you’re Victor. He’s so rich that he is hosting the town’s Christmas party this year and even buys a 10000 dollar tree. He wants to make Noel’s Christmas great so she can accept him as her new Dad. He pulls out all the stops and I wouldn’t even say that it’s to make Larry look bad. He’s just insecure and is doing everything that he can to give himself better odds. It only gets personal once he finds out that Larry is looking for a bear so he decides to buy all of them in the city. This is the only part where he goes too far as he wrecks many Christmases since everyone wanted the toy and it was a pretty dirty move. He is forced to give them back by the end and the heroes make up. So, the film wants you to go with Larry or to admit to a draw, but I’m going with Victor here. I’m not saying that money wins, but Larry had many chances, but blew them all. Victor wouldn’t have been able to buy all of the toys if Larry hadn’t slept in. Furthermore, they both (Victor’s proxy anyway) ran into a store at the same time when it opened, but Larry was outrun (Of course) and by the time he got to the toy section, they’d all been nabbed. Larry did his best after that, but he got taken into a choke hold and an Elf beat him up after that. It was rough for Larry, but at least he never gave up.

Noel was actually a lot better than Jamie from the first film. She was really understanding the whole time and took everything in stride. It was as if nothing could bring her down and the only thing that mildly upset her was how everyone kept fighting over her. She got everyone in line though and ultimately acted like one of the best kids in recent films. It’s hard to be better than her. Her Mom didn’t really have a role at all, which was surprising. She basically just watched the two Dads fight with an amused expression the whole time.

The film’s humor does occasionally wander into lower depths than the first film. Larry gets so nervous that he does something pretty sad and then makes sure to tell his friend about it. Not only is this not funny, but it doesn’t make sense. At least not for something this mild. The scene where Larry’s looking for trees and an attendant comes out to help him is also poorly handled with cringe worthy dialogue at every corner. That moment couldn’t end fast enough! Once those two moments were out of the way though, the rest of the film is fairly sound.

It certainly flew by fast and the film was just entertaining. While Larry was a little too exaggerated to allow him to be a winner here, his personality was handled well. You can still tell that he’s a nice guy as opposed to being a terrible person who just happens to be a good father. There’s a difference, trust me. His Teddy Bear fight with Victor is good as well although it naturally doesn’t beat the fist fights from the first film. I definitely think that this one held back a little too much in that regard. The action was dialed down quite a lot. Perhaps they thought that it would be bad for the kids to see or something? I get that standards have changed over time, but since the WWE helped with this film, you’d expect some action.

Overall, Jingle All the Way 2 is an admirable sequel. It may not have topped the original film, but it’s a good film in its own right. Some parts of it are fairly cheesy and don’t make sense, but that’s the problem with having this plot amidst a very exaggerated contrast. Victor’s speech about how he envies Larry’s ability to go out and have a lot of fun is just a little unbelievable. It’s a lot easier to buy into Larry’s argument since he literally cannot compete with Victor’s money. It doesn’t help that all of Larry’s attempts to do something special for Noel backfire completely. Taking a peek at her letter was also very underhanded and I like to think that Victor would not have done that although I suppose that’s not a complete guarantee. If you want a hidden star in this film, keep an eye out for Victor’s head of security. He may have thrown Victor off the bus by the end, but he did a really good job of executing the mission right from the get go. I’d recommend checking this film out. It also feels pretty fresh since I had not seen it before and adding new Christmas rosters to the collection is always a blast. No worries, it still makes for a good January film. I’d actually like to see a third film and it’d be even better if it was a crossover. They could have both families fighting over one copy of a new toy. Arnold may be old, but he still has fighting spirit and if they could get Myron back, the duo would be set!

Overall 6/10