“Hoodwinked!” (2006)

Hoodwinked!

Grade: B

Hoodwinked! contains enough laughs and clever narration to transcend its cheap animation budget, but it isn’t entirely funny or smart enough to remain all that memorable. A few more notes on Hoodwinked!:

• Directing – Creating an independently financed computer-animation movie is an impressive feat by itself, but Hoodwinked! ultimately suffers from its substandard and sometimes offputting visual effects — writer/director Cory Edwards is unable to imbue his characters with perceptible emotion simply because he doesn’t have the available tools to do so.

• Acting – Hoodwinked’s budget went toward the talented voice cast, and it shows — Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, David Ogden Stiers and Patrick Warburton do a great job keeping us invested in the story even though the characters often look like Legos.

• Writing – A fairy tale parody (clearly inspired by Shrek) and a non-linear narrative (clearly inspired by Rashomon) help make Hoodwinked a worthwhile satire, yet the one-dimensional characters and reliance on gimmick leaves the story with no purpose other than to provide us with crude jokes. Luckily, some of the jokes are pretty good.

• Music – Once again taking influence from Shrek with a pop/rock soundtrack, but instead of identifiable singalong anthems, Hoodwinked opts for original (i.e., unmemorable) songs by co-writer Todd Edwards. Then again, the funniest joke of the entire movie is the Appalachian mountain goat tune.

• Ending (SPOILERS) – The ending of the film shamelessly sets up a sequel for characters we stopped caring for 15 minutes earlier (once the film returns to the present timeline, our interest starts to wane). Surprisingly, a sequel called Hoodwinked Too was actually released in 2011. Unsurprisingly, it bombed at the box office. Let’s all pretend that the sequel and the last two minutes of the original never happened, shall we?

• Quote – “What can I say? I was raised by wolves.” — Wolf W. Wolf

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