Hoodwinked Review

I'm pretty tired so I am not going to write too much about Hoodwinked, but I am going to say that I was disappointed with it. I did like how they started with what appeared to be the normal Riding Hood story with attitude, then warped it so that every "suspect's" story was so skewed from the normal fairy tale we heard as children. However, though the idea was very interesting, it still failed to present anything unique. For example, trying to surprise the movie watcher by making an old grandmother an adrenaline junky just seems so cliche.

What really killed me though was the animation. On the movie's website the makers of the movie claim that with the power of modern computers they were able to avoid going to a big name studio and do the animation themselves. This clearly is not the case. When there was a lot of action, especially with more than one character moving at once (ie. the dancing scenes) the animation really slows now and becomes jerky. This really pulls you out of the movie and back into the theater, and you never stay involved with the movie. Also, in a lot of the close ups it is possible to see how simplistic the character models were. It makes them look almost thrown together. This is the antithesis of the effort put into the character in computer-animated movies like Toy Story or Monster, Inc.

Overall I really wouldn't recommend seeing this movie. The idea is cute and so much more could have been done with it. I'm just so disappointed that the movie makers tried to skimp on the movie funding. It really shows and keeps you from enjoying what could have been a funny comedy.