Movie Review: Scooby Doo and the Monster of Mexico (2003)

The movie uses voices from Frank Welker, Heather North, Nicole Jaffe and Casey Kasem.

I have seen bits and pieces of this movie in the past but never had an opportunity to sit down with my daughter and watch the entire film until this weekend. After doing so, I honestly have to say it wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be.

I’ve watched quite a few Scooby Doo movies with her and most are somewhat entertaining. This one, however, just wasn’t as good as some of the others.

One of the main reasons for this, I think, is it is very predictable. Other movies at least make a serious attempt to throw in some curve balls to at least make you wonder if there is more than one suspect. This movie, however, doesn’t do that. And, as a result, it isn’t overly difficult to figure out who is behind the attacks. Even the accomplice (which, it’s kind of obvious from the beginning there is one) isn’t overly difficult to figure out.

I will say there were some interesting moments in this particular movie, including the scene with Shaggy (Kasem) and Scooby (Welker) trying to control a Mystery Machine that had no brakes and that somewhat bizarre scene that had the gang being chased by tourists that were led to believe they were violating ancient artifacts.  Unfortunately, since the main mystery was so easy to solve, those scenes had more of a “filler material” feel to them and weren’t as enjoyable as they probably could have been as a result of that.

The premise of this movie is somewhat interesting and I did like the fact many of the characters were voiced by the same actors/actresses that voiced them in the original television series. However, the overall execution of this movie lacked something and, mainly because there was no real effort to make the mystery at least somewhat difficult to solve, it just seemed to lack something when compared to the other Scooby Doo movies that are out there.

My Grade: C