Hoodwinked!

Hoodwinked! (also known as Hoodwinked!: The True Story of Red Riding Hood) is a 2005 American computer-animated family action comedy film, produced by Blue Yonder Films with Kanbar Entertainment. The film was released on December 16, 2005. It is the first Paramount Animation film.
The film was directed and written by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech, and features the voices of Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, Jim Belushi, Patrick Warburton, Anthony Anderson, David Ogden Stiers, Xzibit, Chazz Palminteri, and Andy Dick.
== Plotedit | edit source ==
The film opens in media res, with Little Red Riding Hood (Anne Hathaway) entering her grandmother's cottage, asking if she's there. Then she sees her grandma in bed, looking rather strange. After telling her granny "how big 'she' is getting", she yells at her granddaughter and orders her to tell her what she's got in the basket. Red then exclaims, "What bad breath you have!". Enraged, Granny takes her "face" off, revealing that it's actually the wolf (Patrick Warburton) in disguise. Red attempts to attack the wolf, but then Granny (Glenn Close) herself comes out of the closet, all tied up. Suddenly, the woodsman (Jim Belushi) breaks through the window, and then they all scream in terror. Until a Lawyer had Ordered The police show up right away immediately, and led by Det. Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers), ask the four about the events leading up to the incident.
Flippers realizes that the gang are all innocent and discovers the real story behind the events. Red is trying to protect her Granny's recipe book from the Goody Bandit, a mysterious thief that steals all kinds of candy and sweets. But instead, Red encounters the wolf, who is also tracking down thefts by the Goody Bandit, along with his only friend, a hyperactive squirrel named Twitchy Squirrel (Cory Edwards). Wolf, based on Irwin Fletcher from the 1985 Michael Ritchie comedy film Fletch (and dressed identically to the Fletch character in the original film) is suspicious of Red. He greets her and tells her to let him have a look in her basket of goodies. But when Red refuses, the wolf roars in herface, scaring her and making her run away. However, when she encounters him again and Wolf orders her to hand over the basket, she sprays him in the eyes with a can of Wolf Away and beats him up with her Karate skills. Angered, Wolf gives chase, but ends up falling into a river when he sees Red's red riding hood (which turned out to be birds wearing it), and the wolf yells out to Red that he'll get her and "her little granny" too. Afterwards, Red flees into the mountains where she find help from a hermit goat named Japeth (Benjy Gaither), who claims that a mountain witch put a spell on him 37 years ago, which causes him to sing everything he says (although he does talk on some occasions). They both ride on a minecart to get to Granny's, but an avalanche erupes. Luckily, Red and Japeth manage to escape the avalanche. Meanwhile, Granny, a successful goody maker leading a double life as an extreme sports athlete ("Triple G") has entered a skiing competition, but finds that a European ski team is to be playing dirty and trying to disable Granny. Granny learns from them that the Goody Bandit hired them to take out Granny, and one of the ski team members (Dolph) pushes Granny off a cliff and she appears to have fallen to her death; however, it is revealed that she has hung onto a branch. Granny avoids the ski team by using grenades to cause an avalanche. Granny "wins the ski race by a landslide" (as said in the news) and escapes the avalanche by deploying a parachute to parasail towards home. At the same time, Red and Japeth are try to get to Granny's cottage on a minecart, but Twitchy accidentally lights a stick of dynamite while Wolf and he are also trying to get to Granny's in a mountain railway car further down the track. They accidentally destroy the railway by throwing the sticks of dynamite out and causing the railway to explode, making Red's cart leave the track. As she's falling, Red sees Granny, believing her to be a vision, but in reality, Granny is still on her parachute, telling her granddaughter to use her hood to land safely. However, Wolf and Twitchy have a more dramatic crash, but are still able to make it to Granny's house before Red. Wolf knocks on the door and tries posing as a paperboy and a publisher's candy gram. Granny, as she tries to land, finds herself entangled in the parachute's drawstrings, and lands in her closet, ensnared by ropes. Wolf quickly dons a Granny outfit and poses as Granny before Red comes in order to try and apprehend her. Simultaneous to these events, the Woodsman (whose real name is Kirk Kirkendall), an aspiring actor, is selling schnitzel on a stick to kids (who are presumably in the forest camping out), but Kirk sees that his schnitzel truck has been robbed by the Goody Bandit. When he receives a callback by Jimmy Lizard (Joshua J. Greene), he learns that a studio is looking for him to try again for a part, he practices by chopping down trees, accidentally making one nearly run him over as it falls, forcing him to jump through Granny's window to get away safely, just as Red discovers Wolf. Then the gang all screams of getting startled.
Flippers noticed that the four said hello to the Goody Bandit, realizes that the common element in all their stories was a cute rabbit by the name of Boingo (Andy Dick) who is Red's best friend, deduces that he may be the Goody Bandit and believes he's behind it. Red, despondent upon learning of Granny's double life, alone, follows Boingo up to a mountain hideout through the bunny's cable car. In his lair, Red tries to confront Boingo about his thefts, but he, along with the evil ski team (who work for him), captures her and rigs her on the cable car loaded with explosives. Granny, Wolf, and Kirk shortly follow Red, discovering her predicament, and send a caffeine-loaded Twitchy down to alert Flippers and the other cops. The other three are able to save Red and capture Boingo as the cops arrive and arrest the bad guys.
The next day, Flippers tells Red, Granny, Wolf, and Twitchy (Kirk finally fulfilled his dream to join his favorite band, the Happy Yodelers) that he is a member of the Happily Ever After Agency, and enlists the four to start a private agency with him, to which they happily accept. Red says that she always liked happily ever afters, and puts on her hood and smiles at the camera.
== Voice castedit | edit source ==
* Anne Hathaway as Red Puckett
* Glenn Close as Granny Puckett
* Patrick Warburton as Wolf W. Wolf
* Jim Belushi as Kirk Kirkendall
* Tye Edwards as Dolph
* David Ogden Stiers as Nicky Flippers
* Cory Edwards as Twitchy Squirrel
* Andy Dick as Boingo
* Xzibit as Ted Grizzly
* Anthony Anderson as Bill Stork
* Chazz Palminteri as Woolworth
* Benjy Gaither as Japeth
* Ken Marino as Raccoon Jerry
* Tom Kenny as Tommy
* Preston Stutzman as Timmy
* Tony Leech as Glenn
* Joshua J. Greene as Jimmy Lizard
* Mark Primano as 2-Tone
* Kevin Michael Richardson as P-Biggie
* Tara Strong as Zorra
* Todd Edwards as Sandwich Man
* Kathryn J. Lovegren as Quill
* Charles Coplin as Caterpillar 1
* Troy Norton as Caterpillar 2
* Kelly Stables as Schnitzel Kid 1
* Eli Montgomery as Schnitzel Kid 2
* Vicki Edwards as Skunk Reporter
== Production[edit] ==
... I realize that there were other independently funded projects being done at the same time, but ... we were the first ... the first kind of a new model and a new way of making an animated film. It was made with no studio money, overseas, then picked up by a major distributor. A few other animated films have followed this path, but not to the level of success that Hoodwinked was able to achieve. I know Veggie Tales had a movie come out earlier that year, but that was with a struck deal and brand recognition. Hoodwinked was this freak of nature that was made completely outside of the studio system and, thankfully, worked.
Hoodwinked! was one of the first independent computer-animated films to be produced without the aid of a distributor. It was produced on a budget of less than $8 million, significantly less than a typical computer-animated film's budget. The costs of computer-animation software had only recently decreased to a price that was accessible to more than just major studios, and according to producer David Lovegren, "Six or seven years ago, the idea of doing Hoodwinked! as an independent [animated] feature would have been impossible."
The filmmakers only made the film independently by necessity, and Cory Edwards has said, "It's not a model to be followed. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, seat-of-your-pants kind of thing that just barely came off." However, he added that the process was worth going through to get the film made, and encouraged aspiring filmmakers to be willing to follow it.
=== Development[edit] ===
The film's production was privately financed by entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar.
Brothers Cory and Todd Edwards founded Blue Yonder Films after a number of years spent producing commercials and music videos in Tulsa. Joined by their friend Preston Stutzman, who was put in charge of marketing for the company, they released their first feature film, Chillicothe, at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. The three then moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of new opportunities, but did not find the amount of success that they had expected. Sue Bea Montgomery, who had served as an associate producer on Chillicothe, also tried to interest studios in working with them, but was met with indifference. She determined that they would have to find greater success in independent filmmaking before anyone would take interest in them and introduced the three to Maurice Kanbar, a successful entrepreneur who had made a minor investment in Chillicothe. They pitched a number of live-action ideas to Kanbar and proposed that he invest in a development division of their company, paying them and covering their rent in exchange for a significant portion of the rights to any scripts that they might sell. Kanbar, however, was interested in a more direct approach, and preferred to focus on trying to produce a single film. He had always been a great admirer of animation and was impressed after being shown a direct-to-DVD computer-animated short film that Cory had made called Wobots. He suggested the possibility of producing an animated feature with them that would tell a familiar story with a twist, and gave them a month to come up with a story idea. Kanbar had expressed interest in Cinderella or Pinocchio, but the Edwards brothers did not like these ideas as they had already been done by Walt Disney. A few days after the brothers' initial meeting with Kanbar, Todd found inspiration in non-linear crime dramas, such as Rashomon, Pulp Fiction, Run Lola Run, and Memento and came up with the idea of telling the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood as a police investigation, using multiple points of view. Kanbar was taken with the idea and agreed to fully finance the film before even seeing a finished script, with the initial intent of releasing the film directly to DVD. In 2002, Kanbar and Montgomery founded Kanbar Entertainment and Kanbar Animation for the production of the film.
Cory served as the film's main director, as he had more experience with animation, comedy, and children's entertainment, while Todd served as co-director. Montgomery and Stutzman were joined by Disney animation veteran David Lovegren as producers on the film, and Cory's and Todd's sister Katie Hooten joined as an associate producer. Tony Leech, who had worked with the Edwards brothers on Chillicothe, was initially hired as an editor, but gained story input as well. He eventually proved to be so valuable to the production that he was given a role as co-director.
=== Pre-production[edit] ===
Hoodwinked! is a parody of the European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood.
The filmmakers found independently producing the film to have both benefits and challenges. Although they were given a great amount of creative control by their executive producer Maurice Kanbar, their small budget kept them from making potentially beneficial changes to the story once production was underway. Todd Edwards related that "Money doesn't just buy you more talent and more machinery, it also buys you flexibility on a story level. At Disney, if they don't like the third act, they just throw the whole thing out and re-animate the whole thing, even if it's finished ... We had no such luxury, and so in a way, you're watching our first version of the movie." Knowing ahead of time their inability to alter the film's script once animating had begun, an effort was made by the filmmakers to finalize the script as much as possible before the start of production, which is not a common practice for studio-produced animated films.
Turning away from the well-known archetypes of the Little Red Riding Hood characters, the filmmakers continued to look towards non-linear crime dramas for inspiration instead. Producer Preston Stutzman explained that "The whole film is about surprises and secret lives." Not wanting Red to be "boring" or "too innocent", she was patterned on James Dean and given the desire of leaving home to find her way in the world. Todd Edwards had the idea of basing the Wolf on Chevy Chase's character in Fletch, feeling that it would be fun to apply the character's dry, deadpan style of humor to an animated wolf, while Cory Edwards created the hyperactive character of Twitchy to serve as the Wolf's foil. Going against types, Red's Granny was written as a thrill-seeking action hero, while the strong Woodsman was written as being childishly incompetent.
The police officers were written to come across as everyday guys and Cory Edwards has explained that the decision to make three of them pigs was not politically motivated. Nicky Flippers was not a part of the story as it was initially conceived and prior to his creation, the investigation was going to be led by Chief Grizzly. After producer Sue Bea Montgomery and her husband pointed out similarities between the film and the 1950s television series The Thin Man, the Edwards brothers and Leech decided to introduce the character and his dog into the film as an homage. They considered several different types of animals before settling on making him a frog.
Director and co-writer Cory Edwards also co-wrote two of the film's songs, performed one of them, and voiced the character Twitchy.
Cory Edwards chose to approach the film predominantly as an action/comedy, instead of as a typical animated film, and wrote the script to appeal to audiences of any age like many of the films produced by Pixar or Disney. Road Runner, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and The Muppets have all been cited as inspirations for the film. An attempt was made to distance the film from Shrek and other similar themed films that had been recently released, by excluding magic, wizards, and fairies from the film. Cory Edwards also strived for a different style of humor than Shrek, choosing to make his film more family friendly and less of a satire.
Working out of Tony Leech's apartment, Cory Edwards sketched the film's storyboards, Todd Edwards wrote the script while simultaneously writing the songs, and Leech edited the story reel on his Mac computer. Producer Sue Bea Montgomery showed test screenings of the story reel to children in her neighborhood, and gained input from their reactions. The filmmakers had been considering removing Japeth, but chose not to when he proved popular at these screenings. The children also particularly liked Twitchy, which led to the expansion of the character's role.
In an effort to save costs, the film's cast was originally going to be composed mostly of friends and family members of the filmmakers. Cory and Todd brought in their cousin Tye Edwards to play Dolph and turned to their friend Joshua J. Greene to play Jimmy Lizard. Japeth was written specifically for Benjy Gaither, the son of gospel music singers Bill and Gloria Gaither. He had been a friend of the Edwards brothers since childhood and Cory's short film Wobots had been produced through his animation studio Live Bait Productions. Cory's wife Vicki was given the role of a skunk reporter, and while some consideration was initially given to having an adult play the child woodpecker Quill, the role was instead given to producer David K. Lovegren's daughter Kathryn. The Edwards brothers, Leech, and producer Preston Stutzman all took on roles as well. Cory took on the role of Twitchy, and Pro Tools was used to speed up the recording of his dialogue by 50 percent. Todd played Sandwich Man, Leech played both Det. Bill Stork and Glen, and Stutzman played Timmy.
As the producers gained greater confidence in the film, however, larger name actors were brought in. Patrick Warburton was the first celebrity actor to join the film and did so purely out of a love for the script. Though Cory Edwards had originally envisioned the Wolf as sounding like a mixture between a young Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, he praised Warburton's performance, saying that he "made the Wolf his own character." Andy Dick also joined the cast early on, to voice Boingo. He used improvisation and approached the role differently from how it had been written, interpreting the character as victimized and unstable. The filmmakers were enthusiastic over Dick's angle on the character, and Todd Edwards said, "What we had written was kind of stock, to be honest, but Andy Dick, well, where he was supposed to laugh, he'd be crying. Where he was supposed to yell, he'd be laughing. He just mixed it up!" Prolific voice performers Tara Strong, David Ogden Stiers, and Tom Kenny were cast in multiple roles. Strong was cast as Red and Zorra, Stiers was cast as Kirk, the Woodsman and Nicky Flippers, and Kenny was cast as Tommy and Woolworth the Sheep. Emmy-winning actress Sally Struthers was brought in to play Granny Puckett and Joel McCrary was cast as Chief Grizzly.
=== Animation[edit] ===
I'll be real honest, there are many, many shots that I wince at when I see them, because it's not my standard of excellence. I know they could be better, but there comes a time at the end of the day where we just had to give up on some things. So to hear critics and people on the internet, like, ranting about it, we all want to yell back and go, "We know! We know it's bad! But this is what we could do!" And the fact that the film is successful in spite of that is really cool, because it basically says to the industry, not to continue to make poorly animated films, but to say, "Look at what the story and the charming characters did; they were able to surpass the bad animation and the technical problem."
The film's animation was created on Maya software, and in an effort to save costs, was produced in Manila, Philippines. Producers Sue Bea Montgomery and David K. Lovegren founded the animation studio Digital Eye Candy for the purpose of the film's production and stationed it in a 5,000-square-foot rented house. Cory Edwards traveled to this studio a total of fifteen times over the course of the film's three-year production and has explained that although the house was located in an expensive part of Manila, the rent was no more than that of his two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. When Cory was not able to be on site, Todd took over directing duties. "Along with Tony, we were kind of a 'three-headed monster,'" Cory explains. "We all knew what movie we were making, and I trusted those guys to make creative calls when I couldn't be there." Lovegren had attempted to start an independent animation studio in the Philippines before in 2001, but the studio, called ImagineAsia, was closed after it failed to attract business. Digital Eye Candy hired approximately twenty animators that had previously been employed by ImagineAsia, and at one point the studio reached fifty employees.
The film's animators had little experience with computer-animation and feature-length films, and had to be trained by the producers over the course of the film's production. Since none of the animators were specialists, they were not divided into specific teams, but instead each worked on all areas of the animating process. The filmmakers found this to be a poor method though, because it kept the individual skills of the animators from being optimized. Due to their independent backgrounds, the animators were accustomed to working at fast paces, and despite their small numbers, each phase of production was able to be completed within a short period of time. Still, schedule and budget restraints led the filmmakers to enlist Prana Studios in Mumbai, India to perform lighting and compositing.
The filmmakers found that the most difficult aspect of producing the film independently was their inability to fix all of the mistakes made in the film's animation. Todd Edwards explained that "it becomes an equation: 'I have 10 things that I would like to change in this shot. I have the time and the budget to do three. Pick those three and then let's move on.' And that was hard to do."
Knowing that they could not match the quality of other computer-animated films, the film was instead designed to imitate the look of stop motion. Cory Edwards cited Rankin-Bass as an inspiration and explained, "If we approach our look like that—photographed miniatures in stop motion—and if that nostalgia resonates with our audience as far as that look, then we're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot trying to put every freckle and hair on photoreal creatures." Edwards contrasted the technically innovative, but critically panned 1986 film Howard the Duck with the simple, but beloved puppet character Kermit the Frog to illustrate to his crew the importance of well-written, likeable characters over technical quality.
Distancing the film from what producer Preston Stutzman called the "candy-coated, brightly colored pastel world[s]" of other CG animated films, an attempt was made to bring an organic look to the film, and dirt was rubbed into the colors. The Nightmare Before Christmas was cited as an inspiration for the filmmakers to try to bend the characters' shapes into extremes, and many other choices unconventional to computer-animated films were also made. For example, one of the Woodsman's eyes was made bigger than the other, and Red was given only four fingers, so as to make her look more like a doll. Producer Katie Hooten explained that "CG in the past has been pushing the envelope to make things look more realistic, but Hoodwinked takes things back to where CG looks a lot more like a cartoon."
=== Music[edit] ===
The film's score was composed by John Mark Painter, who along with his wife Fleming McWilliams, constituted the rock duo Fleming and John in the 1990s. The Edwards brothers were fans of the group and first met Painter while Cory was performing in an animated film on which Painter served as the composer. The score was inspired by music from the 1960s and the soundtracks to Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows, and The Untouchables have been cited as influences, as well as the works of Henry Mancini. It was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, where Kristin Wilkinson served as the orchestrator and conductor.
In an effort to appeal to older audience members, Todd Edwards chose to replace parts of Painter's score with original rock music. From this came the song "Little Boat", written and sung by Daniel Rogers, who had composed Edwards' first film Chillicothe. "Runaway" was written by Joshua J. Greene, a friend of the Edwards brothers', who also provided the voice of Jimmy Lizard in the film. "The Real G", sung by Cory Edwards and "Bounce", sung by Todd Collins were both written by Painter and Cory Edwards. "Blow Your House Down" was performed by the Filipino band Pupil and written by their lead singer Ely Buendia.
Todd Edwards wrote nine original songs for the film and sung four of them: "Critters Have Feelings", "Tree Critter", "Eva Deanna", and "Glow". "Eva Deanna" was written about a day that he and his wife spent at the zoo with their niece, the daughter of associate producer Katie Hooten. "Glow" was written about the Edwards siblings' grandmother, Vera, who had died a few years earlier. "Great Big World" was sung by Anne Hathaway and replaced another song called "Woods Go-Round", which Edwards considered too childish and described as being "in the vein of Saturday morning cartoons." This change required the scene to be re-animated and re-cut. "Be Prepared" was sung by Benjy Gaither and developed out of a practicality; the filmmakers wanted to introduce Japeth while the character is rocking back and forth on his horns, as though the horns are a rocking chair. However, they realized that this would make the horns too big to fit in a minecart later on in the film. As a solution, they came up with the gag of having the character switch his horns several times, and this led to the song's concept. McWilliams joined Jim Belushi to sing "The Schnitzel Song" and Painter asked his longtime friend Ben Folds to sing "Red is Blue", a selection strongly advocated for by Edwards. Folds was working on a new album at the time, but a year after the proposal, found the opportunity to record the song and compose a piano arrangement for it as well. "Top of the Woods" was sung by Andy Dick and was originally composed to be slow-paced. The recording of Dick's performance was sped up though at the suggestion of Ralf Palmer, a prolific animator and friend of producer Sue Bea Montgomery.
=== Distribution[edit] ===
Sally Struthers was the original Granny for two years of the project. She did a fantastic voice. When Glenn Close walked in, she said, 'Why do you need me? Sally did a great job.' I didn't want to say 'because Harvey made us.' I'm friends with Sally through some other people – I ended up writing her a nice note ... Sally did more of a southern, battleaxe granny, Glenn's was more a prim and proper one.
Harvey (pictured here in 2011) and Bob Weinstein distributed Hoodwinked! as one of The Weinstein Company's first films.
Hoodwinked! was shown to potential distributors throughout various stages of its production. Though a distribution offer was made by DreamWorks, it was turned down as the filmmakers did not feel that it was a good deal. As the film neared the end of production, it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Harvey and Bob Weinstein were also at the festival at the time, screening Robert Rodriguez's film Sin City, which they were distributing through their then newly formed studio, The Weinstein Company. They decided to pick Hoodwinked! up for distribution after it was brought to their attention by Rodriguez's wife, whose attorney also happened to work for Blue Yonder Films.
The Weinsteins had recently left the Walt Disney Company and according to Cory Edwards, they "loved the idea of picking up an animated film and giving Disney a run for their money." The involvement of the Weinstein Company encouraged Kanbar enough to enlist Skywalker Sound. The film was nearly complete by the time that the Weinsteins became involved, and Edwards has stated that nothing was done by them to ruin "the original vision of the movie." However, a few edit suggestions were made to quicken the film's pace which Edwards felt were good ideas, as he considered the first twenty minutes to be dragging.
The Weinstein Company also heavily recast the film with bigger-name actors in the hopes of attracting a larger audience. Anne Hathaway replaced Tara Strong in the lead role of Red; Jim Belushi replaced David Ogden Stiers in the role of Kirk, the Woodsman; Anthony Anderson replaced Tony Leech in the role of Det. Bill Stork; Glenn Close replaced Sally Struthers in the role of Granny Puckett; Xzibit replaced Joel McCrary in the role of Chief Grizzly; and Chazz Palminteri replaced Tom Kenny in the role of Woolworth the Sheep. Despite these recastings, Tara Strong retained the much smaller role of Zorra, David Ogden Stiers retained the role of Nicky Flippers, Tom Kenny retained the role of Tommy, and Tony Leech retained the role of Glen. Many high-profile country singers were considered to replace Benjy Gaither in the role of Japeth, but none of them were available and Gaither retained the role. The Weinsteins also wanted to replace Joshua J. Greene in the role of Jimmy Lizard with a more famous actor such as Albert Brooks, but the role was ultimately not recast. Edwards appreciated the reason for the recastings and attributed a large part of the film's financial success to them. He expressed disappointment about the amount of recasting, however, saying, "At a certain point it became Recast-o-Rama, everybody got recast-happy. My feeling is, you get two or three names on that poster, you're fine. Our Hoodwinked poster has like a paragraph of names on it. After a certain point, I don't think you need more than two, three celebrities—give it to the voice actors. It sweetens the pot." Since the film's animation had already been mostly completed by the time the recastings were made, the new actors had to deliver their lines exactly as the old actors had done, giving them no opportunity to improvise. Edwards expressed disappointment with the fact that the original actors would not get any credit for their improvisations in the film, which were copied by the replacement actors.
== Release[edit] ==
Hoodwinked! received a one-week, limited release in Los Angeles on December 16, 2005 to qualify for Oscar consideration. A nationwide U.S. release was scheduled for Christmas Day, 2005, but it was moved to January 13, 2006 to avoid competition with other films released during the holiday season.
=== Home media[edit] ===
Hoodwinked! was released on DVD on May 2, 2006 and on Blu-ray and DVD on February 15, 2011. The film was the best-selling DVD in its initial week of release, selling over 700,000 copies and making over $13.5 million. A 22-minute behind-the-scenes video podcast is available for free on iTunes.
== Reception[edit] ==
=== Box office[edit] ===
In its opening four-day weekend, Hoodwinked! grossed $16,879,402 in 2,394 theaters in the United States, ranking No. 2 at the box office and averaging $7,050 per venue. It fell $50,000 short of Glory Road, which took the box office's number-one spot that week. The film maintained its number-two spot in the box office for its second weekend, dropping 16.1 percent, and placed in the top ten for a total of five weeks. At the end of its theatrical run it had grossed a total of $110,013,167 worldwide—$51,386,611 in the United States and $58,626,556 in other territories.
=== Critical reception[edit] ===
Hoodwinked! received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 46%, based on 125 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "This fractured fairytale doesn't have the wit or animation quality to compete with the likes of the Shrek franchise." On Metacritic, it received a score of 45 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, and claimed that many of the film's ideas for altering its familiar storyline "sound better on paper than they turn out in execution." Finding it tedious to view the film's story told multiple times, he wrote that the film "slips into boredom." Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle also gave the film two-and-a-half stars, and although he praised its "snappy dialogue and fresh characterizations", he considered the film's plot underdeveloped and characters lacking in motivation. Peter Rainer writing for The Christian Science Monitor gave the film a C+ and called it "a moderately enjoyable escapade that isn't quite clever enough for adults and not quite imaginative enough for children." He was not overly critical of the film, but felt that it was a disappointment in comparison to the high standards for computer-animated films set by Pixar. Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News suggested that timelessness is a necessary component of an animated classic, and faulted the film for its attempt to be hip and current. While Ty Burr of The Boston Globe praised the film's vocal performances, he wrote, "Hoodwinked never builds to a level of sustained comic mania ... One aches to think what the great Looney Tunes directors could have done with this material."
Several critics, however, were more enthusiastic about the film. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave Hoodwinked! an A- and praised the zaniness of its humor. Calling the filmmakers heroes, he compared them to Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh due to their potential for bringing independent filmmaking to prominence in animation. Although Nancy Churnin of the Dallas Morning News considered the film inferior to those of Pixar and DreamWorks, she still gave it a B and wrote, "it's got an upstart charm, a clever premise, appealing characters voiced by a terrific cast and a script that should make you laugh out loud more than once." In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Wilmington praised the film's voice cast, music, and script, and wrote, "it packs more verbal wit and surprise than the usual cartoon." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times gave it three-and-a-half stars out of five calling it "high-energy, imaginative entertainment".
Japeth was praised amongst both positive and negative reviews. Gleiberman and Churnin both felt that the character was one of the best parts of the film, and Westbrook and Wilmington both described him as "a hoot". In a mostly positive review for the Orlando Sentinel, Roger Moore called the character hilarious, while in a mostly negative review for Variety, Justin Chang wrote that the character "steals the show every minute he's onscreen."
One of the main criticisms of the film was the poor quality of its animation. Berardinelli called it some of the worst CGI animation in memory. He felt that the characters looked plastic, considered the backgrounds dull, and wrote, "On more than one occasion, I thought I was watching something made for TV. When compared to today's visual standards for animated films, Hoodwinked is far below the curve." Burr considered the film's surfaces poorly rendered and compared them to "Teletubbieland reupholstered with Naugahyde." Westbrook felt that the animation worked well for the animal characters, but wrote, "the humans have a glassy sheen and brittle hardness, much like work done in the early days of CG ... That art has come too far to embrace a throwback like Hoodwinked as lovably quaint. It's simply dated." Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post compared the characters to rubber toys, and wrote, "their faces are without nuance or vividness ... In movement, especially, do they lack grace and conviction. It seems like the recent breakthroughs in computerized magic have bypassed the poor Edwards fellows, as it looks stuck somewhere in the 1970s, or maybe even earlier."
Many reviews negatively compared the film to the Shrek series. Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail considered the film to be "a sort of discount Shrek", while Burr called it "Shrek with added drek." Westbrook wrote that "Echoing such a popular predecessor as Shrek is not a good thing—especially when the echo is so faint." Berardinelli felt that the fairy tale references were not as smartly done as in the first Shrek film, while Bernard felt that Hoodwinked! took fairy tale revisionism too far. He felt that the humor in Shrek worked due to the fairy tale characters remaining in character throughout the film, and wrote, "It's pointless to scold them for behaving the way fairy tales intended, and that's far funnier than turning them into breakdancing anachronisms." Bill Muller of The Arizona Republic considered Red's kung fu abilities to be overly similar to Princess Fiona's "Matrix agility." Gleiberman also noted the similarities between the film and Shrek, but he was positive in the comparison, feeling that its independent production gave the filmmakers "the freedom to follow their flakiest corkscrew whims." While Wilmington did not find Hoodwinked! as impressive or beguiling as Shrek, he wrote that "when it's cooking, it does make you laugh."
Retrospectively, several critics noted that the film was considerably better than the 2007 computer-animated fairy tale parody film Happily N'Ever After. Although Burr had given Hoodwinked! a negative review, he likened the film to Citizen Kane in comparison to Happily N'Ever After. Wilmington also considered Hoodwinked! the superior of the two films, and Lou Lumenick of the New York Post felt that the film was far wittier than Happily N'Ever After. While Christy Lemire of Associated Press likened Hoodwinked! to a poor man's Shrek, she went on to call Happily N'Ever After a poor man's Hoodwinked!
In 2018, Richard Brody of The New Yorker called Hoodwinked! one of the top independent films for families. Acknowledging the crudeness of the animation, he nonetheless praised the writing as "bold and funny" and wrote that the direction "displays admirable comic timing." Brody considered the character personalities distinct from those in other animated comedies. He also commended the vocal performances for having a "zippy, brash energy that doesn't feel condescending". Hoodwinked! has also been praised by Tony Bancroft, who co-directed Mulan.
Hoodwinked! received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Animated Film at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, but lost to Corpse Bride. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film as number ten on "The Must List" for its January 27, 2006 issue, calling it a "genre-busting indie animated gem."
Category:Films
Category:2000s Films
Category:PG-Rated Films