“Hoodwinked” (The Weinstein Company)
The real story of Red Riding Hood – wink! Wink!
“Hoodwinked” is a re-telling of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The story is told using claymation animation (or so it appears) and has a large cast of vocal talents including Glen Close, Anne Hathaway and Jim Belushi. The plot is clever and tells the “real” story of the events concerning Red Riding Hood, her Granny, the wolf, and the woodsman.
The film opens with Red Riding Hood going to her Granny’s home and finding a wolf posing as her grandmother. Her Granny is tied up in the closet and a woodsman crashes in through the window to save the day. Or at least that is the way the Brothers Grimm told it.
In the investigation conducted by Mr. Flipper (voiced by David Ogden Stiers) Red riding Hood (Hathaway) was selling goodies for her Granny, the wolf (Patrick Warburton) was an investigative reporter, Granny (Close) indulged in extreme sports, and the woodsman (Belushi) was an actor.
As you can see this is a story told with as much deviation from the original as possible. This makes for some fun at the first but the convoluted plots and the off the wall characters get a little stale towards the end.
In truth this could be a Saturday morning cartoon and it would have the same effect. There is nothing in it to lift it to the level of a “Shrek” or even a “Finding Nemo.” It’s cute, it’s clever, it’s average.
The actors do a good job of making their voices play to the characters. Hathaway is especially noteworthy as the voice of Little Red Riding Hood, or “Red” as she is called here.
The film is rated PG for comic violence.
As an animated film the children might enjoy, “Hoodwinked” is okay. It also has enough off the wall jokes to keep the older members of the audience entertained for a while. But overall it is a movie that is fated to be best enjoyed as a rental
I scored “Hoodwinked” a Grimm 5 out of 10.
