This is a re-write of my short, unhelpful review on this movie, as written in August 2010.
Now, Hanna-Barbera was known for clever cartoons that made up for its limited animation by featuring funny characterizations and sight gags, witty stories, catchy background music, zany sound effects and excellent voice work. During the early-to-mid 1990s, however, they began to struggle before they began producing original material for Cartoon Network, having fallen behind by its new competition (Disney and WB's TV animation studios, as well as the Nicktoons). Some of their 1990s stuff was good ("Tom & Jerry Kids," "The Halloween Tree"), and some of it was bad. This movie is, unfortunately, one of their worst productions ever.
I had high hopes for this movie. It had a pretty good-looking voice cast (with Casey Kasem and Don Messick voicing Shaggy and Scooby, and also featuring many other talented voice actors like Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Tony Jay, Jennifer Hale, Kath Soucie, Frank Welker. etc.), and the video cover artwork made the plot look interesting, but I turned out to be deceived. The plot was very weak; Shaggy and Scooby-Doo were only in 15 minutes out of the film's 70-minute running time. Shaggy just tells stories to the nerdy Caliph (a precursor to Mandark of "Dexter's Lab"), and there is virtually no indication that these are stories he is telling. So it pretty much segues into another cartoon. The "Aliyah-Din" story is pretty much a no-brainer parody of Disney's "Aladdin" with the genders reversed to make it less obvious, and many of the characterizations and gags are unoriginal and seemed ripped off of other cartoons (especially anything made by Disney or WB); for example, Haman is an obvious rip- off of Jafar (with a bit of Dick Dastardly thrown into his design too). Yogi's running gag where he keeps hoping for food gets annoying after ten minutes, too. The soundtrack is also poor. Regarding the music, while I am usually a fan of the Carl Stalling-esquire style (as composed by "Animaniacs" composer Steve Bernstein), just doesn't work with this movie; it's always stopping and starting, moving with every knee jerk or double take, etc. I don't mind hearing this on a "Tiny Toon Adventures" or "Animaniacs" segment (great shows BTW), but here it just sounds out of place. The sound effects are also pretty much out of place, as the cartoon does not use Hanna-Barbera's famous sound FX that often, instead mostly opting for the old Treg Brown/Looney Tunes sound effects. And just as bad is the animation. It is actually very poor, even for 1994 standards! Character designs are rather wonky-looking, the backgrounds are over-stylized, even Shaggy and Scooby look strangely off-model! And the movements are pretty jerky and remind me of some of the worst early "Tiny Toons" animation (but without the crappy computer system used here), and there are a lot of cheap-looking digital pan and zooms that could make you nauseous.
Overall, this was one of Hanna-Barbera's worst cartoons ever from one of their worst periods ever, period. This was pretty much their equivalent to "Titanic: The Animated Musical." Even my YouTube Poop of this movie is better than the real thing! (Check it out if you get the chance to, it will save you the trouble from watching the real thing!)
