Film

Hoodwinked (2005)

Director: Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech

Movie review

From Time Out London

Little Red Riding Hood gets the ‘Rashomon’ treatment in this chipper family animation unravelling events from four different points of view. A mysterious Goody Bandit has been stealing from the forest’s sweet shops, but the local cops’ more immediate concern is a domestic disturbance at Granny’s cottage. There, they find Red (a sharp little pipsqueak, voiced by Anne Hathaway), Granny (Glenn Close), the Wolf (Patrick Warburton) and the axe-wielding Woodsman (Jim Belushi). Naturally, events are not as they might seem, and flashbacks flesh out the characters as their recent actions are revealed. Despite the relatively rudimentary animation, it’s a breezy, passably funny spin on a children’s classic, mixing slapstick and farce with character humour and delighting in demolishing stereotypes. Sweet little Granny is a secret extreme-sports fanatic, for example, while the Woodsman turns out to be an aspiring actor doing the casting-call circuit. The story itself is slight, more concerned with farcical set pieces and cop-drama parody than a gripping plot. This is fairy-tale revisionism for junior MTV fans: speedy, irreverent and forgettable fun.

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