Oh piss off.

1/10

Ranking:
#1 - Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed - 8/10
#2 - Scooby Doo: Abracadabra-Doo - 7.5/10
#3 - Scooby Doo: Stage Fright - 5.5/10
#4 - Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico - 4.5/10
#5 - Scoob! - 4/10
#6 - Scooby Doo and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon - 3/10
#7 - Daphne & Velma - 1/10

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...Nah, I'll talk about this movie, despite my better judgement.

When I reviewed Scoob! a while back, I wrote the phrase "What a piece of shit" in the conclusion. I realize now that using such harsh language was a mistake, and that I should be more conservative when using such terminology. I will not apologize to that movie, as I still think it is terrible, but I feel as though such a thing should have been reserved for a different and far worse film than the simply mediocre and confusing movie that is Scoob!.

Now Daphne & Velma? What a piece of shit.

This is not only the worst movie on this entire list, but potentially one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my entire life, or at least within the past five years. Good god, what a fucking piece of shit this movie is. This is a failure as a Scooby-Doo movie, this is a failure as a teen "girl power" movie, and this is a failure at even being remotely original, as it's basically just a weird clone of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets from a story standpoint. If you really want to see a movie where Daphne and Velma do stuff, go watch Monsters Unleashed or Zombie Island or literally anything else.

And it's not just that I think this movie is "cringe" (it is), or that I dislike either of the two title characters (I don't), it's that there's hardly a single redeeming factor in this film. This thing could have an A-list cast and it would still be horrible, the script is doomed and so is the entire concept of this movie. You guys, this is so bad. But fine, I'll talk about it. This shit has to be seen to be believed.

The movie opens on an ad for "Ridge Valley High", a highschool doubling as a capitalistic nightmare, being used as a beta test for a bunch of new and probably dangerous technology by a company Bloom Innovative and its founder, a guy named Tobias Bloom. This, of course, is treated by the characters as super cool and awesome and great, as is the fact that your GPA in the school is also partially determined by your social media posts. The titular Daphne and Velma begin as online friends.

Daphne belongs to a rich family who moves around a lot, and also believes in ghosts are the paranormal. Velma does none of those things. Daphne is also apparently notable for extreme luck, with everything in her life always going right for her, to an uncanny degree. Daphne is just terrible in this film, from her actress to her character, she is unbearable and frustrating. In general she also just looks bad, with a really shitty wig and consistently bad outfits. She's half-black in this film, but for reasons that make you think they wanted to be praised for having a diverse film rather than actually making a diverse film. Every other character is white except for her mom (duh) and a black guy at school who serves exactly the role you would expect a black guy to serve in a "horror movie".

Daphne is starting her first day at Ridge Valley High, where she meets a bunch of "trendy teens" who gush about social media, say "hashtag", adore Tobias Bloom, and generally make me start to consider a lobotomy. I don't remember any of their names, but there's the black guy, there's a bully guy with two dumb henchmen, the aforementioned black guy (the top ranked student in the school) and a girl who is friendly but glares suspiciously at Daphne a lot. There's a big board that Daphne also learns that Velma goes to this school, and goes out of her way to harass, annoy, and basically torture the poor girl because she doesn't want to talk to Daphne.

After enough harassment, the two are sent to the principal's office, which turns out to be Velma's aunt. She sits them on a weird uncomfortable looking hard plastic couch that physically presses them together until they make up. After school, they begin to hear strange whispers from inside the walls, Daphne recording them on this alien-shaped pen that has a microphone. Daphne LOVES aliens in this movie for some reason, I don't know why. They see the black guy walk into a locker in a trance, and then disappear. They freak out and run into Daphne's dad, who she gets very upset at for being at her school. Velma runs into an angry janitor lady who is irrelevant.

Daphne's dad, despite it not being that weird to be at your child's school on their first few days, rather than just saying he was doing paperwork for her transfer or dealing with some other assorted things, instead confesses that the only reason she is lucky is because he has been following her for her entire life and manipulating events while in a disguise (including crossdressing) or hiding in order to benefit her. I shouldn't even need to tell you how extremely bizarre this is, but the weirdest thing is that it almost literally doesn't even affect the movie outside of five minutes directly after and once towards the end. It's mostly glossed over and the only consequence is Daphne dressing worse because her dad stops helping her do anything after she yells at him and tells him to stop, including picking out outfits, and her being mad at her dad for most of the movie.

The one thing I can say about this movie that isn't calling it shit is that Velma's actress is actually much better than the screenshots I saw would suggest. She seems to genuinely try, and overall does an alright job. She seems like she could be at least sort of funny if she had a script that wasn't beyond awful, and she starts dressing like the classic character somewhat halfway through the movie, unlike Daphne who continues to be terrible to behold on-screen. There's a very notable drop in how much she gives a shit about the movie depending on how stupid the script is at a given time, which is kind of funny.

The black guy shows up again after vanishing, but it seems as though his brain has been fucked up somehow, as he's a shambling barely functional zombie. He must have watched this movie.

Daphne and Velma fight a couple more times and more students keep vanishing and showing up brainless. They deduce that the top ranked students are getting vanished, and see a weird cloaked figure "floating" around a couple times. Linking this idea to the lockers and the mysterious whispers they are hearing, they investigate the crime, suspecting the bully guy initially as he seems to be gunning for the top ranks and very smug about this fact. He also gets owned though, so Daphne and Velma come up with a plan: sabotage everyone else in the school and hit the top rank to bait out the villain.

This part of the movie is the only remotely entertaining part, and it's like a one minute montage. It's not original or special, but I do enjoy a sabotage montage every now and again. Once they get Velma into second place though, they notice that a girl that they like is in first place and go to check on her but following the whispers, they find a secret passageway and are chased around like, a server room by the cloaked figure in the worst chase scene ever. The music is bad, it cuts around awkwardly, it has a real crap door scene, and its literally only there because the writers realized "oh shit, we forgot to make a scooby doo movie".

Eventually they unmask the "ghost", and it's Daphne's dad riding on a fucking hoverboard, following her in secret again to make sure she stays safe. Why did he just silently chase them around for five minutes? Why didn't he say something? How did he get into the secret passageway too? None of its addressed, he's just there. Now a trio, the group finds a weird computer room with some kind of tube that has a student in it. They try to free her but she gets sucked away somewhere. Through exploring the room, they learn that the whispers are luring the kids to the lockers and the tech CEO using the school as a testing ground is.... evil... whoa.......

Once this """"shocking revelation"""" takes place, the group formulates a plan to invade the corporate HQ. They use a drone to knock out a security guard, and find that the security guard is the only person in the entire building, which they find weird despite it being the middle of the night. They walk around the building and encounter Tobias Bloom in his office, who attacks them with spider robots. Velma manages to block their laser weapons and defeat them with... karate though. I don't know how this works, and speaking of things that don't work, Tobias Bloom is revealed as a hologram based on a male model?

The real mastermind is (drumroll please...) the girl who gives Daphne sketchy looks, who is revealed to be 26 years old, a scientist, and using the guise of Tobias Bloom because... no would take her seriously in the field of tech as a woman. She steals student's brain power in order to steal their ideas because apparently she can't just eavesdrop on them or pay them with her billions of dollars.

This plot twist outright breaks the entire movie. I haven't really talked about it yet, but we literally see Tobias Bloom several times throughout the movie, and this guy does stuff like eat pizza and give an entire presentation at a school assembly. It is almost entirely impossible for him to have been a hologram. Also, there's just zero foreshadowing for this twist in any way beyond some comically sketchy dirty looks here and there. She's defeated by Daphne's dad calling the police and I finally get to turn this dreck off.

This movie is GARBAGE, and I didn't even actually talk about half of it. There's countless "friendship moments" where Velma thanks Daphne for coming into her life despite objectively being a shitty friend, a pointless subplot where Bloom kidnaps Daphne's mom, and so much annoying zoomer facebook instagram tiktok social media shit that's very obviously written by boomers who know even less about that stuff than me. I can't make this movie sound as bad as it actually is, but it's so, so annoying in a way that makes Scoob! seem like a masterpiece of comedy writing.

You might think this looks "so bad it's good" or similar, but it's not. It's a slog. Tedious, irritating, and made with the budget and skill of a Nickelodeon sitcom (except Drake & Josh that one's kino), Daphne & Velma is a real miserable mess, and watching it is a genuine waste of time. I can almost guarantee there is nothing even close to this level on the entire wheel, because even the fucking WWE shill vehicle was made with infinitely more soul than this hunk of garbage. I also wasn't kidding when I said that it's a Chamber of Secrets ripoff. The plot structure here is extremely similar to that movie, except its set in a terrible corporate hellscape instead of a magic school.

Regardless, I stand by the rating I gave earlier. I can say with zero reservation that I wish I didn't waste an hour and fifteen minutes of my life on this film. From the bottom of my heart, fuck this movie.

1/10

Ranking:
#1 - Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed - 8/10
#2 - Scooby Doo: Abracadabra-Doo - 7.5/10
#3 - Scooby Doo: Stage Fright - 5.5/10
#4 - Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico - 4.5/10
#5 - Scoob! - 4/10
#6 - Scooby Doo and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon - 3/10
#7 - Daphne & Velma - 1/10

at least theres a mystery i guess????????????

i didnt even know this movie existed. what in the fuck?

this is about as pointless and confusing as that 101 dalmations prequel

it also confuses me when shit meant to prelude old as fuck franchises goes all in on modern tech. like i get why here in a way considering who it's trying to target but jesus

every screenshot of this looks like a living headache too, i hate the lighting/colors

this reminds me of the shows that were made by that foot fetishist pedophile at nickolodeon

idr his name. dan harmon or some shit