Hoodwinked

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.