Scooby fans a new movie is here with us and that means yours truly is here to bring you my thoughts on the movie and I have to say that unlike the last movie I really wasn't looking forward to this one that much since it looks like the Scooby-Doo franchise is going the same way as the Tom And Jerry franchise and so here is my review of Scooby-Doo! and the Gourmet Ghost.
The plot of the movie is Scooby and the gang investigate the haunting's of a historic colonial inn that's been turned into a state of the art culinary resort. I have to say that even tho the plot is only there to serve the guest stars it does work well for a Scooby-Doo movie and even tho the film is around and hour and twenty minuets long you really don't feel any of it the story goes on for as long as it needs to.
Of course we have the Scooby regulars who are played by Frank Welker , Grey Griffin , Matthew Lillard and Kate Micucci. In terms of the Scooby regulars the best performer for me was who i'm now dubbing the best Webby Kate Micucci she gets all of the best lines in this movie and in my opinion she gives the best performance.
In terms of guest cast we have Bobby Flay as Himself , Giada De Laurentiis as Herself , Marcus Samuelsson as Himself , Maya Haile as Herself , THE voice for Pooh and Tigger as Jeremiah Noseworthy and the Red Ghost and David Kaye as Henry Metcalf and Chef Edward DuFlay. Unlike in the first WWE crossover movie the acting from the celebrities is terrible granted some are worse then others but the overall majority are bad in fact the only guest actor who I really liked was Jim Cummings.
The animation for the film was done by Warner Bros Animation and I have to say that it was really good there's a lot of fluid movement which I always like to see and alot of the backgrounds were really good to look at I did spot the odd off looking drawing every know and then and oddly enough it was always with Scooby himself but they were few and far between.
I would just like to clear up what I said in the opening what I meant was the last dozen or so Tom And Jerry films have had them interacting with other famous stories and as you can tell with all of the celebrities in this movie I didn't really like it because I don't want this franchise to go the same way and be tied to other famous people Scooby-Doo can and has made alot of movies without having insert famous person here popping up.
Now since this is Scooby-Doo that means there's a mystery and I have to say the mystery was for me the weakest part of the movie since when a certain character came on I pretty much shouted "they did it" and sure enough I kinda got it right I shouldn't know stuff that the characters don't when the characters work out who did it that's when I the viewer should realise who did it and since that wasn't the case in this movie I was just sat there wondering when this person was going to be revealed so I could be proven right.
If your going to do a crossover movie you have to find the right balance of making sure certain sets of characters come out on top and for me that's what this movie does right everytime Giada does something amazing we see Velma actually show us how smart she is and for everytime we see Bobby be impressive we see how Shaggy and Scooby are impressive in there own way.
I just touched on this but this was the first time in a long time that we actually see Velma be smart there's a scene where everyone is being chased by the monster and instead of following them Velma heads in a different direction because she knows something and that for me was a great thing to see because Velma is meant to be the smart one of the group and there are very little times where we see her be the smart one.
Overall this wasn't a bad movie but it's not Scooby-Doo! at it's best it felt like a film meant to promote it's guest stars rather then be a Scooby-Doo! movie and so the movie gets a 5 out of 10 from me and this movie is out right now on Digital and is currently slated for a DVD release on September 11th.