Hoodwinked! (2005)

Don't let the crudity of its animation fool you, this fresh fairytale told in non-linear fashion is a riotous affair that's frankly hilarious at times and consistently smart in its satirisation of both the source 'Red Riding Hood' story and the genres it combines so successfully. 'Hoodwinked! (2005)' may not look the part and is slightly contrived in its overarching story, but each of the perspectives are bolstered by brilliant voice-work (which is where I suspect most of the money went) and held up by a stellar script (which is what I suspect brought those certified stars on board the project) that makes this one a true hidden gem often overlooked by pretty much everyone. It literally never fails to make me laugh and once even had me close to tears. 7/10

...........................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA...and ORLANDO, FL HOODWINKED easily could have been an excellent film. Who hasn't heard of Little Red Riding Hood? It unfolds as an ongoing investigation into the facts, where each character, one by one, recounts events from their own perspective. Sound interesting? Well, it seems HOODWINKED was truly well conceived, but experienced several setbacks during its execution.What began in the mid-nineties with Toy Story, soon followed by SHREK and Finding Nemo, the C G I Category (Computer Generated Images) has established itself as a ore dominant genre with each passing year! But ALL CGI movies can't be a TOY STORY, a SHREK or an AVATAR (Shame, that!) First off, the animation in HOODWINKED, by Weinstein Studios, just didn't manage to convince me! In their intent to mimic the "CLAYMATION" of Wallace and Gromit, they placed a limitation on themselves which impeded them from realizing the full potential of the CGI process. In addition, they were incapable of making a film like SHREK, for example, which encountered great acceptance from both adults and from children alike! Nevertheless, since there are really so few good comedies nowadays, HOODWINKED is quite acceptable, even fun at times!7*.....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA! Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome! [email protected]

This film is severely underrated, I googled reviews for Hoodwinked after watching it and finding it to be one of the most entertaining and nuanced animated children's comedies around. I'm only here to try to set the record straight. Criticism of this film is so shallow, comparing it in terms of animation quality to blockbusters like Shrek, with its much larger budget and production company. Who gives one about the animation?? In terms of the actual content of the two films compared, I personally do not think the millions of extra dollars pumped into Shrek paid off with a more enjoyable film- I actually find the jokes in Shrek weak and far too reliant on Eddie Murphy's "funny black guy" delivery (although I much prefer Shrek 2). All in all I think Hoodwinked is definitely worth watching, if it is approached with an open mind.

I saw this film at the cinema when it was released in the UK in 2006 and I found it enjoyable on the whole, especially the story and the music. I've watched it at least twice more since then; once when I rented it and today when I now own the DVD (which I won online from Jambareeqi, an Internet star who reviews rare animated films on YouTube, including this one that wasn't his cup of tea). On my most recent viewing, the story was as good as I remembered but sadly the character animation wasn't.Starting with the animation, it was inconsistent in quality. The movements were decent half the time but the other half of the animation consisted of choppy, floaty and robotic movements. The same can be said for the character designs. The furry animal characters such as Wolf, Twitchy the Squirrel and Chief Grizzly were well-modelled but the human characters looked plasticky, particularly Red, Nicky Flippers and the woodsman, ugly (the children shown during the schnitzel song) and blocky (again the schnitzel children and the human competitors in the skiing contest). Nevertheless the characters were rich in colour as well as the detailed backgrounds. There are a couple of exciting sequences such as the ride through the mine shaft and Granny's snowboarding and it made sense that certain parts of the animation were repeated to show how well the stories from Red, Wolf, Granny and the woodsman intertwined with one another. Besides the animation quality, the other weakness with the film was its pacing. The part where the four main characters tell their sides of the story is quite rushed but the pacing drags on afterwards and the ending was abrupt. Further to the story, the other strengths were the witty and intelligent dialogue, the music (especially the songs by Red, Japeth the Goat and Boingo and the rock and rap songs over the end credits), the humour from Twitchy, the voice acting and the well-known cast including Anne Hathaway (Red), Patrick Warburton (Wolf), Glenn Close (Granny), Jim Belushi (the woodsman) rapper Xzibit (Chief Grizzly) and David Ogden Steirs (Nicky Flippers, also the voice of John Ratcliffe in Disney's Pocahontas films).Overall, 'Hoodwinked' is a new, engaging and thrilling take on the fairy tale that everyone knows and loves albeit its inconsistencies with its animation quality and pacing. 8/10.