Hoodwinked

Hoodwinked is an American computer-animated family comedy produced by Blue Yonder Films with Kanbar Entertainment. It was released by The Weinstein Company in selected markets on December 16, 2005, before expanding nationwide on January 13, 2006. It was written and directed by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech, and stars the voices of Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, James Belushi, Patrick Warburton, Andy Dick, David Ogden Stiers, Xzibit, Anthony Anderson and Chazz Palminteri. Although it is based on the Little Red Riding Hood folktale, structurally, it borrows from the films Rashomon and The Usual Suspects, and its setting uses the same type of anachronistic and satirical mixing of modern and fantasy culture as the Shrek films. It is 80 minutes long and is rated PG for mild action and thematic elements.

Main Cast

• Anne Hathaway –Red Puckett
• Glenn Close –Granny Puckett
• James Belushi –The Woodsman
• Patrick Warburton –The Wolf
• Cory Edwards –Twitchy
• David Ogden Stiers –Nicky Flippers
• Xzibit –Chief Grizzly
• Anthony Anderson –Detective Bill Stork
• Andy Dick –Boingo
• Chazz Palminteri –Woolworth the Sheep

Synopsis

The story begins in media res, with Red, the Wolf, Granny, and the Woodsman in their confrontation at Granny's house. Mid-scene, the story jumps ahead to the police cordoning off Granny’s house following the opening events. The lead investigator, frog-form Nicky Flippers, interrogates each of the four participants, with each character giving their own version of how and why they arrived at the house. Because the film uses a police interrogation as a framing sequence, it is evocative of the 1995 crime thriller The Usual Suspects, and because the four participants’ stories converge at points prior to the meeting at Granny’s, and are at times self-serving, the format is evocative of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon.

Red, the first interview subject, tells Flippers that she is merely a delivery person for her Granny’s “goodies”, and that when she came across the ransacked home of another goody-maker, the latest in a recent string of such attacks by a thief known only as the Goody Bandit, whose crimes have resulted in the closure of many goody makers in the forest, Red decided to take the hidden recipe book in the house for safekeeping. This admission appears damning, as it casts Red in a suspicious light, but Red asserts her innocence, adding that on her way to Granny’s house, she fell from an air trolley she was riding with the rabbit Boingo, and when she landed in the forest, she ran into the Wolf, who, after questioning her, appeared to become hostile. After using her martial arts skills and a “Wolf Away” spray to repel the lupine attacker, Red fled, using a mountain railway system manned by a singing goat with detachable horns with different uses. As the railway cart they were riding emerged from the mountain, Red saw that the tracks far ahead of them were apparently destroyed, and an image of her Granny appeared in the sky above her instructing her to use her hood as a parachute, which Red successfully did (the goat used a pair of helicopter-horns to land safely also). When she gets to Granny’s she sees through the Wolf’s transparently obvious Granny disguise, and just as he reveals himself and the two confront one another again, a bound and gagged Granny jumps out of her closet, and then a crazed-looking axe-wielding Woodsman jumps into the living room through the window screaming, to the horror of the other three.

Flippers then interrogates the Wolf, who it appears certain is the culprit. But the Wolf reveals that he is an investigative reporter whose prior stories Flippers is familiar with, and tells him that he and his hyperactive photographer, a squirrel named Twitchy, were investigating the recent thefts of various recipes by the Goody Bandit, and became suspicious of Red when he saw her traipsing through the forest with goodies in a basket. He explains that he was merely questioning Red because it was his job, and that when his tail got caught in the film chamber of Twitchy’s camera, he roared in pain, which Red took as an attack. After using a shortcut provided by Boingo the rabbit, the Wolf and Twitchy used the mountain railway system, which was destroyed when Twitchy lit a candle in the cart that turned out to be a stick of dynamite. The duo arrive at Granny’s house, and the Wolf throws Twitchy in the closet to hide, but Granny is already there, and already tied up, which complicates the authorities’ view of the Wolf as the culprit. The Wolf puts on a Granny disguise, and the confrontation is again seen.

The Woodsman is then interrogated. He reveals that he is an aspiring actor, and that for money, he drives a goody truck, selling schnitzel on a stick to children. He tells Flippers that after a disastrous audition for a bunion cream commercial, where his thick Austrian accent hurt his chances, he got a callback. He then discovers that his goody truck has been robbed, apparently in another attack by the Goody Bandit, as Boingo opines on the scene. The Woodsman is distraught, but decides to prepare for the role of a woodsman by chopping down trees. But an avalanche approaches, and a log he finds himself atop rolls down the hill to Granny’s house, and he is thrown through the living room window, hollering the entire way.

Granny is the last to be interviewed. She reveals that she is an extreme athlete who prefers activities like snowboarding to being the stereotypical goody-making grandmother. She explains that she enjoys such activities, and that at a snowboarding tournament between her teammates and an opposing team, Boingo the rabbit even asked for her autograph. She tells Flippers that during the race down the mountain, the opposing team physically attacked her and her team, and she narrowly escaped a mountain avalanche via a parachute. As she approached her home, she saw Red below her in the railway cart, and advised her to use her hood as her own parachute. Shortly after, Granny arrived in her bedroom. Her parachute became caught in the ceiling fan, and she ended up wrapped up in it and thrown into her own closet. The familiar confrontation with Red, the Wolf and the Woodsman then ensued. The revelation of Granny’s other life is a shock to Red, who is hurt that Granny lied to her.

The police are back to square one, as none of the four appears to be culprits, but then the basket of Granny’s goodies and the recipe book is found to be missing, as is Red. We then see Red following the real thief, the one who was present during all four accounts: Boingo. Red follows him on the air tram up to the mountain, where he and his henchmen, the aforementioned opposing snowboarding team, plan to corner the market on goodies, and make them highly addictive to kids. Red is discovered, and placed in the air tram filled with dynamite. The Wolf, Granny and the Woodsman follow, and foil Boingo’s plans. Red is freed from the air tram before it explodes, and Boingo and his henchmen are captured by the police. The next day, Flippers tells the four that he has decided to open up his own private business, and offers to enlist the three for their special skills. The three accept.

Reaction

Test audiences for the film, which featured parents and children, were generally positive, with some concerns by parents over the violence in the film (there are some physical altercations involving martial arts, and two scenes involving lethal explosions), and of the sinister nature of the character of Boingo.

The film exceeded analyst expectations ^{[citation needed]} by nearly doubling what had been predicted for its box office debut, winning the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend according to initial estimates, though it would lose the crown to Glory Road a day later when the actual receipts were calculated.

The quality of the film's animation has been criticized, specifically by animators within the animation industry, some of whom believe that the success of the movie shows a disregard for quality and will eventually hurt the industry. This has been disputed by many fans of the film, who believe that the film has a strong story, whose importance supercedes that of the animation. ^{[citation needed]}

Trivia

• An early cut of the film featured the voices of Tara Strong as Red and Sally Struthers as Granny before the voices were recast with Anne Hathaway and Glenn Close. The actor who voiced the Woodsman also did so with a far heavier Austrian accent.

• An alternate title of the film was Hoodwinked! The True Story of Red Riding Hood.

• In the Disney animated film The Emperor's New Groove, Patrick Warburton played a doltish henchman named Kronk, who, among other things, had the unique ability to understand squirrel language. In this film, he plays the Wolf, whose assistant is an at-times-hard-to-understand squirrel.