I saw Hoodwinked last night, and let me tell you, it was pretty good. When I saw the previews I was expecting something a little more kiddy and a little more, well, lame. But I enjoyed it immensely. It may have been the fact that there was a dude sitting next to me commenting on how retarded the woodsman was, but it was enjoyable. Basically, there’s a goody bandit who has stolen all the recipes for treats in The Woods and Red, the wolf, the woodsman, and the granny are all suspects and all of them are placed under arrest and have to explain the situation. This is the first half of the movie and is probably the most interesting. We start off following Red (Little Red Riding Hood of course) on her journey delivering her grandmother’s sweets to the forest critters. When she arrives at her grandmother’s house, well we all know the fairy tale. The wolf is disguised as the grandmother and tries to “attack†Red, Red’s grandmother appears all tied up from the closet, and the woodsman jumps in the window to save Red from the wolf. Or is that what really happens? Before the cops are about to haul away all four characters to jail (for being the goody bandit of course), a frog detective appears and interviews all four of the suspects. It hearkens to Rashomon (where we get four different views of the event from the different people, from Red, the wolf, the woodsman, and finally granny (I’m not comparing it to the rest of Rashomon since, well, you can’t really compare them. In fact, it’s really just the same idea that they used, four different points of views on the same event is what I’m trying to say).
Now, I’m not going to talk about the rest of the movie, because the rest after the interrogation trial was a bit weak. Yeah, they have to resolve the fact that there is still a bandit out there stealing recipes, but I mean, it’s really obvious who the bad guy is. I’m not going to give it away, but if you do watch it, then I’m sure you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. The characters weren’t that endearing either. I didn’t feel any connection with them. One can say that it’s because their CG characters, but I felt more “into†the movie when I saw Shrek or Toy Story. So character development was not a major point in this movie, nor plot really. It was just a funny and an interesting twist on the Red Riding Hood fairytale as well as on the characters of the Granny and Wolf.
The effects as well were pretty half-assed. Apparently Hoodwinked was the cheapest made movie of this genre (rrr…CG cartoon?) and you can tell. The arms on the humans are really blocky, they have no nostrils, and Red doesn’t have any details on her fingers (no fingernails!). Now this may have been just to prove that they could make a decent movie on a small budget, but it all looks a little rushed to me. Graphics wise I wasn’t really that impressed. Toy Story looked better and that was years before this movie. There are some fine details that really annoyed me too, like there is very little movement of Red’s hair when she’s running or walking or anything really. The animals are definitely more realistic, so to speak, in this movie. The fur is done pretty well, and maybe that’s on purpose as well since it is based in the forest and the animals are the majority. But who knows? The other thing that irked me was that there wasn’t a lot of expression in the eyes, at least not what I’m used to when I watched other movies of this sort. Or maybe there’s not a varied amount of expressions. But the voice acting was pretty decent and some of the songs weren’t too bad either (although I don’t really feel that any of the characters should have sung, but maybe it’s just another jab at Disney cartoons?).
Overall I did enjoy the movie, but I would suggest waiting for it on DVD for those of you who would watch it. It’s not worth the money to see it in theaters, and since I saw the movie for free, well, I didn’t feel cheated out of my $10.75 (yeah New York City prices). Although it is fun, I don’t think I’d own this movie though, probably just a rental.
"Hoodwinked!" opens January 13, 2005 and is rated PG. Animation, Children & Family. Directed by Todd Edwards, Cory Edwards. Written by Cory and Todd Edwards. Starring Chazz Palminteri, James Belushi, Ken Marino, Patrick Warburton, Glenn Close, Anne Hathaway, David Ogden Stiers.
