Review of Hoodwinked! (2005) by Johnny S — 02 Apr 2009

Let's get this out of the way up front: The animation in this movie is terrible. It has a weird, waxy, unfinished look to it that looks like animatics for a Pixar movie, or perhaps a poorly-animated video game. (Heck, at the rate video games are evolving, many of them outpace this four-year-old movie.).

But, I understand that this was an independent animated film that was made on a pretty small budget. And, fortunately, the look of the film is not necessarily the *only* thing required to make it work. The premise is cute (and owes more than a little to "Shrek"), turning a beloved fairy tale on its head. The story of Little Red Riding Hood becomes a crime thriller. Neat idea.

And the voice cast adds personality to the characters that the animation just can't match: Anne Hathaway's Red Riding Hood is spunky. Glenn Close is feisty as Granny. Perennial voice actor Patrick Warburton is smooth as the wolf. David Ogden Stiers is my favorite, as a smooth frog named Nicky Flippers, investigating the case.

The bottom line is that this movie is hard to look at, but kind of entertaining if you can look past the shoddy animation. Fortunately, I was able to start doing that with about 20 minutes worth of practice...or a full third quarter of the movie's running time.