Rating of
2.5/4
not pixar or dreamworks but a good kids movie
TheWolf - wrote on 08/09/07
This film is rather uneven, and one must expect that from what we are given. All the characters have something hidden in their characters: Red is a black-belt karate champion; Granny is doing extreme-sports (and she won't even tell her own granddaughter!); and the Wolf is a Fletch-inspired undercover journalist accompanied by a hyperactive squirrel photographer. These are the sort of jokes just bordering on the edge of cliché. So why is the Woodsman's tale so good? Kirk is not actually a Woodsman but a faintly Austrian actor. His Schnitzel song (which he sings as he sells Schnitzel-on-a-Stick to the children as a day job) and his first attempts at woodcutting (which he takes up to get in the mindset for a Paul Bunion Cream commercial) are comic highlights.
And these gags are surprisingly effective thanks to the rather jumpy animation. Most CGI animation is very fluid, true to life, but in Hoodwinked, the characters which are animated least fluidly make the best impression as they cut suddenly between poses. It's almost as if this movie could be a bit better hand-drawn rather than computer-animated. Watch the Woodsman and Twitchy the Squirrel; it's been a long time since somebody's facial expressions have made me laugh.
