Posted: 12/27/2005

Hoodwinked

(2005)

by Hank Yuloff

I guess in a year in which the animation category for has as its strongest competitors one strong story: Madagascar, one cute idea: Robots, a short going long-form: Wallace and Gromit, and two well “drawn” but entirely weak stories: Chicken Little and Corpse Bride, it made sense for the producers of Hoodwinked to take advice from the masters of Oscar spin, the Weinstein brothers (formerly of that little company called Miramax) to get this retelling of the Red Riding Hood story out for a week in December to qualify it for the 2005 Oscar. After all, why wait until 2006 when Disney’s Toy Story 3, Pixars’ Cars, and DreamWorks’ Over The Hedge are all going to hit the theaters.

The best word to describe Hoodwinked: cute. Cute twist on the story of the Big Bad Wolf going after Red Riding Hood, cute dialog, cute drawings, cute Hollywood Happy Ending. Cute is nice, but it doesn’t beat Pixar or Disney to the Oscar statuette.

The twist on this story is that someone has been stealing all the Goodie Recipes from the forest. This is putting all the Goody Shops out of business. This made me think—“You people don’t have ONE recipe in your heads?” HUGE and UNFORGIVABLE plot problem. Totally lost my buy in. We begin by seeing Red Riding Hood Anne Hathaway (Princess Diaries, Ella Enchanted)) on her way to Grandma’s house. You remember what happened at Grandma’s house, right? Well, right after the “What big eyes, ears and teeth you have” part, the Forest Cops are called in to investigate, causing the Wolf (Patrick Warburton from MiB II, Sky High), Red, Grandma (Glenn Close from The Natural and Fatal Attraction) , and the Woodsman (Jim Belushi from According to Jim) who broke up the whole thing to each tell their story.

The cops are split on who is guilty. Chief Grizley (Singer Xzibit from 8 Mile) wants to take in the Wolf, but investigator Nikky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers from M*A*S*H and The Majestic) feels there is more to the case and allows them all to tell their story, which physically brings us back to the beginning of the book several times.

This is an average movie. It has some good humor, and the animation is good. But it also has an obvious bad guy which makes us know the ending waaaay too early in this 80 minute film to build up any suspense. It should not even be one of the three that end up getting passed on for Oscar consideration, so wait for it’s very quick jump to video.

Hank Yuloff is our senior film critic in Los Angeles where he scours the streets daily for a glimpse of Jessica Rabbit.

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