Hoodwinked is a computer animated film, wrapped around the childhood tale of Little Red Riding Hood. The added plot, pretty thin and a weak rip-off of the anti-big-box-retailer sentiment, is that a recipe bandit is stealing all the recipes from the little shops in the forest. And so when the wolf is caught at granny’s house, with a tied-up granny in the closet, he appears to be the prime suspect because granny is known as the primo goodie-baker in the whole forest, and one of the few remaining to have so-far escaped the wiles of the bandit.
One delight of the movie is that it shows that same timeframe/scenes from the different perspectives of Red, the Wolf, Granny, and some other characters. What seems to be isn’t always that way, and the film handles this with a good deal of wit and cleverness. There are enjoyable, interesting side characters, such as Japeth the Goat (played by the son of Bill Gaither), who claims to have been cursed by a mountain witch so that he has to sing everything he says. Or Nicky Flippers, the cerebral frog detective voiced by David Ogden Stiers.
I also enjoyed the chock-full pop culture references that only the grown-ups would catch. The entire Wolf character (hilariously voiced by Patrick Warburton, best known as Puddy on Seinfeld) is a complete riff on Chevy Chase’s Fletch. There are references to Star Wars, The Matrix, and i’m sure plenty of other things i missed.
So Hoodwinked is a nice combo of fun & giggles for the kids, and also enjoyable for their parents. While the bandit mystery isn’t all that hard to solve (even my kids figured it out), you should find plenty to make this a worthwhile rental.
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