I got Hoodwinked!

I was prepping myself for the weekend’s release of “Hoodwinked Too!” by watching “Hoodwinked!” obviously. I never really cared too much about the first movie, but after seeing the trailers for the second one, it looked way too good to pass up. So I prepped myself for some good ol’ animation fun. See if I liked the first one after the jump.

I really liked the story, as in they play on the typical Red Riding Hood tale, and twist it into their own wacky tale. Most of the movie is taken place with the police trying to solve what happened when a crazy axe wielding woodsman barged into Granny’s room, while she was tied up in the closest. It only gets more weird when the Wolf is dressed up as Granny trying to persuade Red into giving him the basket of goodies. Why the wolf wanted the basket so badly? You find out in the movie, and it does a pretty good job of covering all the bases and leaving you with a satisfying ending.

The biggest shining point of this movie is the characters. Most of them are well created and equally voiced well by the stars themselves. And don’t get me wrong, there are some heavy hitters in this movie. From Anne Hathaway as Red, to Xzibit as Chief Grizzly (Yo dawg I heard ... I am going to stop myself). But by far my favourite was the hyper active squirrel, Twitchy (Cory Edwards). He was The Wolf’s sidekick and he was a blast to watch. He spoke and moved real fast, and his dialogue was real funny. I found him to be the funniest and most entertaining to watch.

The Wolf and my favourite character: TWITCHY!

This leads me to the so-so part of the movie and that is the humour. To cut it short, it wasn’t the greatest. I did laugh out loud a few times, but a lot of it was dry and kind of lacking. I got most of the jokes, but I am not sure why they weren’t funny. And what really killed the mood were the musical scenes in between. I just saw Rio recently, so I know what amazing musicals should sound like. So I might be real harsh on Hoodwinked, but the songs were unoriginal and didn’t get my feet taping. Songs weren’t catchy or even funny, and the worst part is that there is a good amount, maybe 4-6 scenes.

Now I come to the bad, and I only have really one big complaint and that is the animation sucked hard. I think I created better graphics using MSpaint. Let alone the actual flow of the animation was real choppy. This movie was made in 2005; “Chicken Little” and “Finding Nemo” were release around the same time. And the quality on those movies was far better than anything in this movie. This isn’t a big flaw but it did put me out of the mood.

Overall, I still enjoyed the movie even with the visual/audio flaws. It got me laughing, and the story kept me pretty well entertained. Though it is sad to say that I am a lot less interested in seeing the sequel now, but who knows? After a few years, they got some money and invested in some good animation and hopefully a good composer.

Best part of the movie: Even though it was a musical scene, but when Red meets the goat that changes his horns was my favourite part.