Probably the weakest of the direct to video Scooby-Doo! movies.
While this film tries to follow in the shoes of Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost, this movie feels like it is trying to hard and missing the mark by a long shot. It is jam packed with jokes but not one of them works and most of them are embarrassingly bad. The Japanese setting feels phoned in and lacks the atmosphere of the best Scooby outings. The new characters are incredibly bland and you are likely to forget them not long after watching. The villain is especially weak and there is never a point when we feel any sense of real threat. The climax needs to be seen to be believed. Scooby-Doo! has never been a series that thrived on any sense of realism and believability. Yet this climax seems too silly and ridiculous even for a cartoon movie. It also seems incredibly out of place in a Scooby-Doo! film.
However none of this is as bad as the music. We are all familiar with the Scooby-Doo! chase songs but they have never been as bad as this. The filmmakers tried to bring a Japanese style to the songs, but it could not have been done more poorly. I was in complete disbelief when I first heard one of these songs play. It in no way matched what was happening on screen and comes completely out of nowhere. The songs themselves are also incredibly bad as they feel like they are trying much too hard to sound Japanese.
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword serves only as a lesson in how not to make a Scooby-Doo! movie.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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