Hoo boy.

I think I might have been a bit harsh on Stage Fright in retrospect. That is a much better movie than this one, almost definitely. It's not even particularly close. And I know, let's get the elephant out of the room here: this is indeed a WWE crossover. That's right, pro wrestling. However, I want to clarify that the fact that it's a WWE crossover has nothing to do with my opinions on this movie and that's not why I'm giving it shit. It's not even the first WWE/Scooby-Doo crossover either, and I've actually seen the other one, entirely due to a clip where John Cena saves the gang from a boulder with his own hands.

That other movie is honestly fine, and it knows that it's stupid. This one is not, and does not. Simple as that.

I'm gonna spend a lot less time on the plot of this one than Stage Fright, as that one just had a lot more to talk about. While that one had stuff like the whole "Phantom of the Orient Express" setup, this one is a loud, annoying mess with a bog standard plotline and absolutely zero charm unless you really really like the WWE. Evidently, Warner Bros. really really likes the WWE though, as every single time the wrestlers are brought up, they are referred to as "Superstars". I'm not kidding either, it's actually quite obnoxious after a while.

The movie begins with a TERRIBLE intro sequence, with a fucking awful buttrock song. I praised the soundtrack in Stage Fright but this goes on forever and sucks big time. After that, it opens at this weird... WWE racing tournament? It's a genuinely bizarre premise especially considering the rules: it's basically like a Mario Kart Double Dash Grand Prix; two racers to a car, a few courses in the same locale, and each car is decked out like its Wacky Races or some shit.

Anyway, as you'd probably expect, the race is sabotaged by the titular Speed Demon, a guy going by the name of "Inferno", said to be the ghost of a racer who died on the course. He has a big car that has a mechanical scorpion tail that can grab things. He is also good at wrestling, which narrows down the suspect pool to... the wrestlers. This doesn't really matter, as besides Vince McMahon, a cameraman, and a mechanic, the wrestlers are the only characters in the film for the most part.

Much like the Phantom, Inferno is nothing special. He's just a guy really, with no abilities outside of a "scary car". Despite this, he manages to injure The Undertaker's partner, so Scooby and Shaggy are stuck racing with him. The Undertaker is one of the better characters in the movie, being one of the few wrestlers here who can act. Other characters include Vince McMahon's daughter, her partner and husband "Triple H", and a guy named The Miz. There's also some Russians who try to cheat, to the point where once the teams are shuffled around in the back half of the movie, each Russian tries to fuck over their own new partners just so the other Russian wins.

Now's the part where I gloss over the plot as this movie is even more boring than the last one. They do a bunch of bland boring races, sometimes someone ends up trying to wrestle Inferno and they lose, McMahon's daughter and Triple H never get attacked by Inferno so the other racers accuse them, to which they get offended, then later on after the final race, The Undertaker piledrives Inferno into the ground after kicking his ass and it turns out to indeed be Triple H, in a reveal that is so telegraphed and obvious that I honestly expected some fakeouts like in Stage Fright.

It is painfully obvious that this movie is just a shill vehicle to try and gets kids into the rapidly-dying WWE, but it didn't even have the dignity to even try and be a good movie. This isn't even the first crossover between the two properties, so its not even just an awkward fumbled attempt here, it's just bad. All of the wrestlers besides The Undertaker and maybe Triple H can't act for fucking shit, and the mystery is insultingly obvious. The villain also was just simply not threatening, even compared to the Phantom. At least the Phantom tried to murder people a few times, this guy is just an even less effective Dick Dastardly because he gets his ass kicked all the time.

And it's so fucking boring. So much of the screentime is spent on the racing, which means its spent just looking at animated cars smacking into each other rather than any kind of interesting chases or the bare minimum in character interaction besides Daphne briefly being friends with McMahon's daughter due to a shared like of money and getting their nails done, or even the typical fucking scooby doo trap. This one actually made me want to bump up Stage Fright's score, so I've decided to change that one to a 5/10 now that I have a better grasp on what I'm up against.

That being said, only the Russians were funny and the rest of this movie is mediocre to shitty. I'd honestly just rather watch fucking wrestling than this, and I don't even like pro wrestling. While it isn't offensively bad necessarily, it's categorically worse than a movie I already considered overwhelmingly "meh", so I'm sticking this one with a...

3/10

Ranking:
#1 - Scooby Doo: Stage Fright - 5/10
#2 - Scooby Doo and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon - 3/10

Evidently, Warner Bros. really really likes the WWE though, as every single time the wrestlers are brought up, they are referred to as "Superstars". I'm not kidding either, it's actually quite obnoxious after a while.

well, of course they do. That's what they're canonically called. See https://www.wwe.com/superstars
Vince McMahon has always been embarrassed about running a wrestling company so he hates calling it that, and would rather make far more embarrassing things, like this movie

what do wrestlers have to do with racing? what the fuck

granted i guess that's a profession more people would want to watch