marmar13

I'll preface this review by saying I have no problems with adult humor, or with a family friendly franchise being reimagined to include such. Nor am I outraged by the diverse casting. I approached Velma with an open mind, and it's just not good.

Like another HBO Max show, Harley Quinn, Velma is full of edgy and fourth wall breaking humor. Unlike that show, Velma seemingly holds nothing but contempt for its source material. Not one character behaves anything like you'd expect, and none of them are enjoyable to watch. Daphne is vapid and mean, Fred is a rich douchebag, and Shaggy is a bore. Velma herself comes across as Mindy Kaling's self-insert Scooby Doo fanfic character. She is the coolest, smartest, and funniest person in the room at any given time and multiple characters want to have sex with her. Everyone else is a loser. It's more sad than it is funny.

The acting is solid. The direction is excellent. The script, though, feels like it had all the pieces to be good, then someone put those pieces in a bag, shook them up, and put them back in the wrong order. There's no suspense if you show a spaceship in the first 2 mins of the movie and show predator half a dozen times before the protagonist encounters it.

Less a movie and more a series of unrelated, grim scenes that drags on for far too long. The stars are for some unique visuals because that's the only good thing this movie has going for it.