YMMV / Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed

• Ass Pull: While the identity of the Big Bad is obvious from the start, Ned the cameraman being his accomplice came seemingly out of nowhere due to his lack of screentime that would have painted him as such.
• Awesome Music: The film's more action-based tone has MXPX perform a hardcore rock cover of the classic theme song. Not anyone's cup of tea, but it certainly goes well with Scooby taking on the Tar Monster.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Alicia Silverstone's character Heather Jasper-Howe being the Big Bad. You have to admit, a famous celebrity playing a supporting character in a Scooby-Doo movie would definitely tip a few people off.
• Contested Sequel: For some, it is a Surprisingly Improved Sequel. To others, it's a film with an odd case of Sequelitis.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • The Masked Figure is an ominous mastermind who is capable of bringing monster costumes to life, and in one scene, gives an evil speech from the deck of a floating ghost pirate ship.
  • The Pterodactyl Ghost is an actual dinosaur with a ferocious roar who makes some pretty bold, speedy attacks.
  • The 10,000 Volt Ghost is made of pure electricity and can deploy that power with chilling effectiveness while sporting a Slasher Smile.
  • The Tar Monster can drown and strangle people with tar and can spread out its body hundreds over yards.
  • The Zombie has a desiccated face and pukes slime all over a reporter who tries to interview him.
  • The Skeleton Men are thin, nasty skeletons with one oversized eye apiece and regularly reassemble themselves after pieces of them are knocked off.
  • The Miner 49er is a fire-breathing thug with rotting skin and a prominent beard.
• Critical Dissonance: Although still panned by audiences and fans, it was considered by fans to be a step up from the original for various reasons. Critics, however, gave it even worse reviews than the original.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Pterodactyl Ghost got a lot of popularity for being a genuinely cool villain.
  • The 10,000 Volt Ghost had less than 60 seconds of screen time, but a lot of viewers found him to be rather impressive.
  • The Tar Monster, who steals the show during the final battle and almost takes out the heroes all by himself.
• Evil Is Cool: Even among the sea of fan-favorite monsters, the Evil Masked Figure manages to avoid being overshadowed due to Scott McNeil's performance, a cool costume design, and being a serious threat the whole time.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Most fans think that cutting the scene showing the second museum robbery was a mistake, given the delicious creepiness of the setting and how it provides a proper introduction to the Ensemble Dark Horse 10,000 Volt Ghost.
• Fridge Horror: The monsters are created from costumes. What would happen if one of them went through the monster making process while someone was still wearing it?
• Genius Bonus: If you listen closely to Scooby at the end, he is seen saying "Mary Jane is a man in a mask", which is a line from the first film.
• Ham and Cheese: Tim Blake Nelson as Jonathan Jacobo, Peter Boyle as Old Man Wickles, and Alicia Silverstone as Heather Jasper Howe ham it up to the best of their abilities, and are clearly having a blast doing it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The cast for the Scooby Gang would go on to mock their roles in Robot Chicken along with Seth Green.
  • The Big Bad using a disguise as a woman to further his plans would be reused by another Warner Bros. property, and then again to memetic effect in yet another Scooby movie. Even funnier when the 10 film Scooby-Doo collection put out for WB's Best of 100 had these two movies on the same disc. And to top it off, it was ONLY THESE TWO MOVIES ON THAT DISC!
  • Shaggy becoming buff during the potion scene became funnier in early 2019 thanks to a resurgence of memes about Shaggy being extremely powerful.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • This movie took a better approach to giving Velma a love interest than previous movie did. Last time, he only served as a Satellite Love Interest to give Velma a reason to give Scrappy some exposition. This time, the new love interest, museum curator Patrick, is shown to have a lot in common with Velma and compounds this with more development of Velma being interested in him, but insecure he won't like her back. Later in the movie, she's also worried about getting too close to him when she finds circumstantial evidence implying that he's the Evil Masked Figure. Her insecurity also helps Shaggy and Scooby break out of the belief that they're Idiot Houdinis and face off against the monsters.
  • Much like the last movie, the villain is an old character from the original. While like the previous time, they had some noticeable inaccuracies, they made Jonathan Jacobo devoid of sympathy and show that his revenge was absolutely unjustified. The presence of The Faux Ghost shows he could've made something better of himself, had he not been consumed by his own hatred.
• Magnificent Bastard: Dr. Jonathan Jacobo stole millions while wearing a flying suit modeled after a pterodactyl to finance his experiments to create monsters. After being captured by Mystery Inc, Jacobo made another flying device to escape from prison, faking his death in the process. He spends the next three years plotting revenge and fine-tuning his experiments to create high-powered, ruthless, loyal monsters by exposing costumes of past villains to a chemical process. Jacobo assumes two disguises: a female reporter, Heather Jasper Howe, and an evil masked figure who publicly challenges Mystery Inc and controls the monsters, at one point riding into town on the deck on a ghost pirate ship. He uses the Howe alias to turn the public against Mystery Inc with some tricky emotional appeals and selective camera footage. When Daphne suspects Howe, he has an accomplice ready to immediately don the masked figure costume and provide Howe with an alibi. His monsters come within seconds of killing the entire gang, and Jacobo remains stoic and defiant after his capture. He uses his monsters as tools and enforcers but doesn't mistreat them and seems mournful when they are turned back to normal.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Captioning an image of the Tar Monster with "We... are... Venom."
  • The scene where Fred's line, "You're trying to make it look like I think Coolsville sucks!" is cut down to just "I think Coolsville sucks!" in the news is often either used in response to real-life Manipulative Editing and Quote Mining, or used for further satire with other characters and public figures (like Donald Trump) saying "I think Coolsville sucks!"
• Narm: Daphne's "fight" against the 10,000 Volt Ghost is too ridiculous to take seriously. After telling him to "taste the pain", she kicks him head on. Unsurprisingly, she gets flung into the air like a ragdoll and lands straight in the dirt.
• No Yay: Scooby-Doo flirting with a human woman while disguised as a normal man.
• Obvious Judas: It's quite obvious that Heather Jasper-Howe is the Evil Masked Figure.
• Older Than They Think: This wasn't the first time in the Scooby-Doo franchise to have a plot where a masked mastermind brings all of the villains Mystery Inc. had unmasked back as real monsters, as the 2002 game Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights did this concept, but it was a lot more in-line with the first Scooby-Doo cartoon.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Cotton Candy Glob. He's not a villain from any Scooby-Doo cartoon in the past, but nobody could ignore his single scene.
  • The Girl Scout who offers to sell Shaggy and Scooby a box of cookies after being trapped by Wickles' security system along with the gang barely has twenty seconds of screen time. However, she's utterly hilarious, adorable and memorable in those twenty seconds.
• Pandering to the Base: Adults or non Scooby-Doo fans can be quite bothered by all of the references to the cartoon.
• Signature Scene:
  • Daphne and Velma fighting the Black Knight Ghost is an extremely cool and fondly-remembered scene.
  • The scene where Shaggy and Scooby repeatedly change personalities after drinking one of the villain's potions is immensely well-loved for being hysterically funny and having some interesting visual effects.
  • The scene where Fred is filmed saying "I think Coolsville sucks" and it gets broadcasted out of context is held up today as pretty much the go-to example of how Manipulative Editing in the news works, to the point it became one of the sequel's iconic memes.
• So Okay, It's Average: While the film isn't exactly Oscar bait, a lot of people enjoyed some of the genuinely good attempts at praising the Scooby-Doo lore and capturing some qualities from the classic cartoon.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The film may have been inspired by Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights, thanks to its deep similarities as well as how faithful it is to the cartoon.
• Squick:
  • Shaggy transforming into a woman. More specifically, the fact that female Shaggy has an attractive body but still has Matthew Lillard's face, causing them to look rather off-putting.
  • Heather-Jasper Howe being revealed to be Jonathan Jacobo isn't too bad, but it gets a little disturbing when Ned reveals that they cuddled, while the latter was under the impression the former was a girl. Not helping matters is Jacobo appearing to be much older than Ned.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: For those who hated the first movie for not following the cartoon close enough, this sequel rectifies this. Critics didn't seem to think the same, however, as this movie received even worse critical reception than its predecessor.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The film concerns monster costumes being brought to life. At the Faux Ghost, we meet the men and women behind those costumes, but none of them, not even Old Man Wickles, acknowledges that their alter-egos have come to life.
  • The costume/prop department also did a fantastic job recreating the costumes of the monsters from several incarnations of the show, even if the monsters mainly show up as background elements.
  • There's also the fact that they missed some obvious choices for monsters to feature, including the Creeper, Charlie the Robot, the Phantom Shadow, the Space Kook, and Captain Redbeard.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • When Velma discovers an altar dedicated to Jonathan Jacobo, it is easy to conclude that Heather is the Doctor's daughter, who is trying to get revenge on Mystery Inc. for his death. Nope, as it turns out Jacobo is the one who built the altar to stroke his massive ego, and was actually posing as the female reporter this entire time. What would be a perfectly reasonable motivation for the villain is thrown out of the window for the sake of making one bad joke.
  • Only a few of the monsters are defeated in personal confrontations in the climax of the movie, and all the rest are defeated at the same time in the final battle. It would have been nice to see a Systematic Villain Takedown where each of them are confronted and defeated one by one.
• Vindicated by History: Somewhat. While nobody today will claim the film to be a masterpiece, the reception towards it has softened over time and nowadays, it's better appreciated by fans for being closer to the spirit of the cartoon, on top of having decent special effects and action scenes and a more consistent tone and focus than the original film, which is a far cry from the near universal negative reception the film had back in the day.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Black Knight Ghost is brought to the screen via a mix of CGI and Practical Effects, other Ghosts such as the Miner 49er, Captain Cutler, the Zombie and the Cotton Candy Glob also aged fairly well in a film otherwise filled with rather dated CGI.

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