Yet again we have one of the rare endings that serves as an actual pay off to the movie. The ending works very well.The problem is the rest of the story sort of stinks. The plot is good, but the execution and the humor is "meh." And it gets doubly bad because of the whole premise. The Big Top, it is a classic Scooby Doo setting and yet it fails to deliver the classic Scooby Doo feel nor does it have the matching classic Scooby Doo story.In the premise they had the making to merge the Scooby of old with the new Scooby--in a far better way than the Goblin King--and it still fell short, painfully short.The plot worked, the ending worked, but everything else failed to hit the mark and only a few of the jokes really stuck like they should.

A bunch of jewel thieves posing as werewolves are terrorizing a circus in Atlantic City. The gang goes undercover as circus performers to see who the culprits really are. This one is actually pretty good! It's very creative and has entertainment in spades. Get ready for some hilariously bizarre stuff in this one. Did you ever think Scooby would turn into Shaggy after getting bitten by a werewolf? How about Daphne being a badass on a motorcycle? Usually she is very danger prone. Normally, I'm not a fan of werewolves. They aren't that intimidating to me. I have to say the werewolves looked pretty cool here, even if more than one werewolf nullified the impact a bit. I also enjoyed the storyline of Shaggy getting too big for his britches. Watching him develop an ego was interesting and I thought they pulled it off very well. It was really unusual to see Shaggy be such a condescending jerk. It was also funny to see Shaggy jealous of Scooby. There were some original story lines in here and I loved it. Fred's obsession with the circus provided laughs as well. The villains aren't that predictable either. Usually, I can predict the villains in anything Scooby. This one managed to keep me guessing with some good twists. I really enjoyed this one. It has a bit of everything. Scooby fans will love it!7.5/10

Big Top Scooby-Doo! (2012) *** 1/2 (out of 4) There's no question that the Scooby-Doo features have been up and down throughout the two decades that they've been made. This one here has the gang arriving at the carnival to find out that it has been taken over by werewolves who are stalking it for an unknown reason. The gang agrees to go undercover and join the circus so that they can find out what's really going on. BIG TOP SCOOBY-DOO is without a doubt one of the best features to be made in the series and it might very well be the best. There's so much that works here that even someone who hates Scooby Doo could probably love this film. Fans of the original series when it was meant as a dark, creepy and atmospheric ride will certainly enjoy this film because it really goes back to its roots. The monsters are all extremely well-made but even better is that the film allows them to be dangerous and I'm sure scary to many of the younger viewers watching. The werewolves are all excellent looking and come across quite menacing at times. The atmosphere is about as thick as any animated feature in history with a certain bleak darkness running throughout the film. The entire visual look of the film is wonderful as the darkness just really soaks up everything going on and makes it all the more memorable. The animation is another major plus as this is probably the best looking feature I've seen from the series. All of the main characters are quite memorable and they're really brought to life by their vocal actors. Scooby is pitch-perfect here as is Shaggy as the two share many great scenes together. Even the new characters are quite memorable. Best of all is that the actual mystery really works well and keeps you guessing right until the end. BIG TOP SCOOBY-DOO has all the horror and comedy that the best episodes in the television series had.

I just saw both 2012's Big Top and 2010's Abracadabra-Doo in the past week and I have to say that Big Top was probably the best Scooby Doo episode made in the 21st century--2002's The Cyber Chase. Unlike Abracadabra-Doo where one could guess who the true villain was from miles away--since only he had the technical know how to pull off all the stunts with the griffin in that episode--with Big Top, a werewolf is terrorizing a circus and his identity is not obvious to the viewer until minutes before he is finally captured.In Big Top, the gang discover that the circus is not a very friendly place and almost all the circus ringleader's employees have an axe to grind with their new circus ringleader--Marius Brancusi--who just inherited "the greatest place on earth" from his uncle. Therefore, the villain could be anyone and discovering his identity turns out to be a difficult job which is great for the plot. Doubleday, in the end, is revealed, to be the werewolf villain partly because he is disgruntled that he didn't get the chance to run the circus after Marius' uncle left the circus even though he had been helping running the circus for years unlike Marius. But something is not right: the jewels the Werewolf stole have not been recovered and Doubleday can't talk since he has been tranquilized. Then the gang realise that Doubleday had an accomplice all along and must give chase to catch this second person before he gets away. So, the plot is quite intriguing and is lots of fun and this episode at 80 minutes...is the longest Scooby-Doo direct-to-video movie ever made and certainly one of the best too since the Witch's Ghost and Zombie Island. Recommended.