Film Details:
Hoodwinked (U)
Family(2005)
81mins US
Director: Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech
Starring: Patrick Warburton, Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, James Belushi

 Click here to read the interview of Anne Hathaway (Red)
 Watch the trailer and clips...
 Play the Extreme Granny game...
 Sing along to 'Critters have feelings' with our karake video...

LondonNet Film Review

Director Cory Edwards and segment co-directors Tony Leech and Todd Edwards have fun subverting fairy-tale convention, aiming most of the laughs at younger audiences, who should be dazzled by the bright, colourful animation and menagerie of cute, fluffy animal characters.

The caped heroine and her co-stars, including an adrenaline junkie granny who gleefully appropriates street lingo ("Fo shizzle!"), are suitably large than life and launch into jaunty musical numbers such as "Great Big World", "Schnitzel Song" and "Critters Have Feelings". Even the villain of the piece gets in on the act, detailing her/his Machiavellian scheme in the form of a show-stopping song and dance extravaganza that prompts another character to quip: "The song was catchy but the choreography was terrible."

As bright and breezy as Hoodwinked may be, there's an absence of visual invention and Shrek and its sequel cut a swathe through the very same storybook world with more style and brio. Parents and older children who pit their wits against the screenplay and try to solve the whodunnit will have their answer surprisingly early, and no amount of red herrings can obscure what is blindingly obvious.

Little Red Riding Hood (voiced by Anne Hathaway) arrives at Goody House, home of her beloved Granny Puckett (Glenn Close), to discover the Wolf (Patrick Warburton) in bed wearing a disguise that is fooling nobody. Before the fanged impostor can attack, Granny bursts out of the wardrobe, shortly before an axe-wielding, muscle-bound woodsman called Kirk (Jim Belushi), who sounds suspiciously like a cousin of Arnold Schwarzenegger, crashes through the bedroom window.

When the shards of glass settle Chief Grizzly (Xzbit) from the local police calls in help from detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) to make sense of events leading up to the confrontation and to unmask the dastardly "Goodie Bandit", who has been purloining recipes from residents of the forest. The amphibian private eye's deliberations reveal dark secrets about the characters, none of whom are what they first appear.

Hoodwinked treats the material with a knowing wink, from Nicky's masterful control of the police investigation ("Bring in a police sketch artist... make that a cartoonist!") to Red Riding Hood employing martial arts to deal a swift blow to her enemies.

he big action set pieces, including an extreme sports race and a runaway mine car, are well executed but never threaten to take the breath away. Benjy Gaither steals the limelight from the big name voice cast as a hillbilly old goat called Japeth with multi-purpose horns, who is cursed to sing (or rather yodel) his every thought.

- Heather Von Bourne

 Click here to read the interview of Anne Hathaway (Red)
 Watch the trailer and clips...
 Play the Extreme Granny game...
 Sing along to 'Critters have feelings' with our karake video...

Trailer

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Clip 1 - Woodsman

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Clip 2 - Granny

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