Hoodwinked
Starring(voices): Glenn Close, Ann Hathaway, James Belushi, Patrick Warburton, Xzibit, Chazz Palminteri
Written and Directed By: Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech
Produced By: Katie Hooten, Maurice Kanbar, David Lovgren, Sue Bea Montgomery, Preston Stutzman
MPAA: Rated PG

Your brain and belly will both get a workout watching Cory and Todd Edwards’ Hookwinked, a smart and funny animated reworking of the Little Red Riding Hood tale. Your brain will wrestle with the classic elements of a 40’s style Film Noir Whodunit and your belly will explode with laughter at some of the sight gags and dialogue sprinkled throughout the story.

The setup is that there is a thief in the forest, stealing all the recipes of all the bakers and sweet treat makers. This evil Goody Bandit has just put another poor baker out of business and has set his sights on Granny Puckett and her family’s secret recipe book.

It’s PG, but nicely off center. It seems more intent on keeping the attention of the grownups than the little ones. There’s enough music here to consider the film a musical comedy, and I mean that as a positive. All songs are written (and many performed) by Todd Edwards and take the film in directions Shrek and The Incredibles never went. Too bad for them, because the songs and performances – the cursed Mountain Goat is particularly hilarious – enhance the whole experience in ways that only music can.

The animation is CGI, but without the super polished look we’ve come to expect over the last several years, and that has generated a lot of plus and minus buzz in the industry. Those in the know point out the crude shadowing, color values, etc. of the animation. While it ain’t Pixar, that ain’t the point neither, say others, and I’d have to agree. Funny is as funny does, and Hoodwinked does funny, regardless of how much money was spent on the graphic expression.

This is a story of mistaken identity and differing points of view, all nicely woven together into a coherent and delightful whole. The narrative starts telling the visit to Granny’s from Red’s perspective – the phone call, the journey, meeting the wolf in the woods, etc. It soon turns into a police investigation, complete with burly Chief Grizzly, Detective Bill Stork and a baker’s dozen of donut eating pig cops, all of who assume The Wolf Did It. Not so, as we find out through the Wolf’s tale, the Woodsman’s tale and the subsequent tales of other characters - all taking you further and further from what seems to be the truth and directly into the heart of the matter.

I enjoy trying to guess the voices in animated films and had a lot of fun doing so with Hoodwinked. The characters include Nicky Flippers the frog detective (played by David Ogden Stiers, doing his best Claude Rains), little Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway, though the visuals had me thinking Patricia Heaton), the Wolf (performed by Patrick Warburton – Puddy from Seinfeld) and Boingo Bunny (Andy Dick doing Paul Lynde) among others.

I also got a kick out of the monologues and back and forth banter. The Wolf, as an investigative reporter shouts to Red, when she tricks him into a Wile E. Coyote-like plunge off a cliff, “I’ll get you and your little granny too!” Granny, seemingly floating above a desperate airborne Red encourages her to “Use the Hood, Red!” Stuff like this shows that Hoodwinked is capable of appealing to older, more seasoned moviegoers in addition to the younger set of Xtreme teenage hipsters.

Did I say Xtreme? Part of the twisted plot is the thread of Granny’s Secret Life as an Xtreme Sport Enthusiast, complete with Triple-G tattoo on her neck and a closet full of trophies. Some of the verbal exchanges between Granny and her Xtreme friends left me in the dust, showing that the movie is also geared toward the Hipper Than Thou 20-something set of movie goers, the Holy Grail of movie makers and exhibitors.

I realize as I write this that I could spend pages trying to describe scenes and setups, but I’m afraid I would only confuse you. Suffice it to say then, that the elements all come together nicely in this tale of misunderstood intention and comic redirection. If you enjoy the cartoon legacy of Bugs and Daffy and Rocky and Bullwinkle, you’ll have a blast following the goings on in Hoodwinked.