I have to admit I don't remember this movie ever having come out, even though it took an impressive $50 million at the box office (on only a $15 million budget). Perhaps cinema's are so jampacked with animated family movies these days that it's easy to overlook one or two, especially when they're from a small company with little experience in the medium. It's this inexperience that you notice first and foremost when you watch Hoodwinked because the animation quality is very poor, little above what you might see from some kids online dabblings. Indeed, the first thing I thought when I saw it was, "hey, that's Tripping the Rift with animals!". Considering the huge advances over the years this is like going back to the early days of computer animation, and sadly it detracts from the rest of an otherwise mildly entertaining plot.
Hoodwinked is essentially Rashomon, if it was set in the Brothers Grimm world of disturbing fairy tale imagery mixed with post-Shrek satire. Joining the action mid-stream we find Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf, Granny and the Woodsman all handcuffed in Granny's house as the police pore over the details of how they came to be. Expecting it to be an open-and-shut case Chief Grizzly is annoyed to find Nicky Flippers, a frog detective of sorts, is not convinced, and they begin to question the suspects to get a better picture. As each of the four characters relates their side of the story it becomes clear that something else unusual was going on to bring them all together, and that this might have a lot to do with the recent spate of recipe thefts throughout the forest...
Sadly while the multi-layered plot is a rather unusual and clever device for an animated movie, it is not backed up by any real quality in scripting, dialogue and, yes, animation. All are well below the quality you'd expect for this sort of film. The voices also lack a certain something. Glenn Close does the kind of stereotypical Grandma accent anyone could have managed, and while Anne Hathaway and David Ogden Stiers are effective, the oft-brilliant Patrick Warburton basically rehashes his Joe Swanson/Kronk accent for the five thousandth time. As an acceptable way to spend 80 minutes Hoodwinked just manages it, as an impressive animated movie in a tough field it sadly doesn't make any headway. |
