Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006, 04:20 PM
I don’t find myself getting out to see movies as much as I used to these days. But I finally saw one that was surprisingly more funny than I thought it was going to be. I really wanted to see Underworld: Evolution, but my wife was not in the mood for an action movie. So, being the whipped (but happy) man that I am, we went and saw Hoodwinked.
While much better than I thought it was going to be, this movie was very uneven. There were moments where we were laughing so hard I thought that I was going to burst, and other moments where I was bored because the plot was so predictable. And the Soundtrack sucks gas! The Animation was not what I had expected, and seemed a little primitive for today’s computer animated features. And finally, I wanted to see an action film when I went so my opinion is a little biased.
These things aside, let me tell you what was awesome about this film. The voice talent really nailed the characters. Andy Dick did a wonderful bunny rabbit, Ann Hathaway was awesome as Little Red, and the Wolf was perfectly sarcastic and dry. The comedy of this film is along the lines of a “He said/She said” situation. Kind of a Colombo meats the Brother’s Grim. To get down the bottom of the menace going on in the forest, a frog detective must get each character’s version of the events that happened that day. Full of one liners and just plain funny twists as each person says what really happened, I found myself thinking of Clue the movie about half way through.
It was really nice to see a movie that my kids at school can watch, that still have a lot of very smart comedy in it. A lot of the jokes will go over kids heads, but the material is not “Adult” in any way. Finally I can encourage my kids to go see a really funny movie that their parents will enjoy too.
I give this movie a B in terms of grade. I liked it, but in a day and age when you have to compete with houses like Pixar and Dreamworks, this movie falls a little short of my expectations for an animated film.
Hoodwinked
Rated PG
Weinstein Company
Released 2006
