HOODWINKED TOO! HOOD VS. EVIL – The Review

As a film lover, one of the comments I’ve heard over the years that irks me every time is ” Well. it’s intended for kids”. This seems to be a blanket excuse for any sloppily made animated features aimed at the moppet set. I believe that now , thanks to the cinema gems from Pixar, Dreamworks, and Blue Sky, that hackneyed phrase can finally be put to rest. Certainly UP, RIO, and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON have themes that interest youngsters, but they’re well executed stories that all ages can appreciate. The makers of HOOWINKED TOO! HOOD VS. EVIL seem to believe that by pairing up star voices with fairy tale satire that they can score a bullseye with that all ages audience. The end result  not only misses that bullseye, it comes nowhere near the target.

As the title suggests, this is a sequel to the original HOODWINKED from a few years ago. The Big Bad Wolf is now part of a secret spy group the Happily Ever After Agency run by a frog named Nick Flippers. When Granny Puckett is captured during a botched rescue if Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood  stops her training with the Sister Hoods to prevent Verushka the witch from perfecting the recipe for a chocolate truffle that makes the consumer all powerful. Along the way they must get information from the Giant and enlist the aid of Kirk the Woodsman and his yodeling gang in infiltrating the witch’s towering apartment buiding and defeat her pig army.

This movie included many of my animation pet peeves. I knew I was in for a rough ride when the first credits seen in the first moments is not for the writers or artists but for all the celebrity voice actors. Over a black screen we got all,ALL. the actors listed along with their characters, not in a group or three or four,but individual title cards: Heidi Klum as Heidi! I don’t believe you need a recognizable voice in every role. It’s not a guarantee of quality. Even more than the Shrek films or SHARK TAILS, the script was choked with dated pop culture references. Oh, Granny’s wearing Uma’s yellow track suit from KILL BILL! The Giant’s doing Joe Pesci’s ” Do I amuse you ” monologue from GOODFELLAS! Oh, a Star Wars joke and a Star Trek gag-from the 60’s series! And the characters never shut up for more than a second! The Wolf is chattering away non-stop! One running gag involves a banjo playing goats who shows up just in time to be smashed by some falling object-almost every fifteen minutes!  Unfortunately not all the problems here are verbal. The character designs of the Wolf, Flippers and Red are very unappealing and flat. They bounce around the generic backgrounds and seem to have no weight or gravity to them. As I left the theatre my aggravation turned to sadness as I thought of all the artists that worked to produce this soon to be daytime cable TV time filler. A lot of talent is needed to produce any animation. Let’s hope that the HOODWINKED series ends with this installment and the artists move on to projects much more worthy of their time and talent.

Overall Rating: One Half out of 5 stars