Taking it's cue from "Little Red Riding Hood", Hoodwinked! turns the story upside down as it applies real-world ethics, archetypes and rules to the scenario; Red Riding Hood calls for a lawyer against the Wolf for possible harassment over her and her Grandma, The Big Bad Wolf claims he was framed and is merely a simple journalist disguised as Grandma to get information on a possible saboteur of the town, Grandma insists she's not supposed to even be at her home at that time and the Woodcutter is confused over just about everything including his presence at the scene and in the movie. All this confusion then leads to a crime-solving mystery as the inhabitants learn there's something else far more sinister at work here than meets the eye, and it will take all of them to work together to discover the real culprit of the infamous tale. Intrigued? I hope so, because i certainly wasn't. Whilst it sounds fantastic on paper, the end result is largely unfulfilled.
Animation and character designs here are awful but that's not what the film's aim was. The goal was instead to create an original and satirical comedy using simplistic character design that epitomise their literature counterparts to lead the viewer into thinking it's a simple kid's movie/retelling of the traditional story when in actual fact the style, the character's attitudes, personality and motives turn out to be radical and unexpected to throw us intentionally. "What you think you are watching your'e not" is the film's main motto, "Forget what you've seen, and what you think you know" best describes the pitch of the film .Unfortunately, in my honest opinion, it just couldn't manage it. Not by a long shot.
An interesting and what should be a fun and satirical concept which the Shrek films touch upon lightly, and whilst Hoodwinked! is a full-fledged CG animated feature based on this idea i felt the Shrek movies do it justice a whole lot better. I was immensely bored whilst watching this film, more so than i ever have been in a while. The film was so bad in its executions that there was literally nothing in it to keep me up except to try and find something to like in the dialogue and voice acting. Typically in an animated movie these days there's your usual roster of Hollywood celebrities providing the voices and here we have Anne Hathaway, Glen Close and James Belushi all in instantly forgettable roles. None of them did anything memorable and it seemed they were only half interested too.
The only voices worth mentioning here are Patrick Warburton as The Wolf (though nowhere near as good a performance as his from Bee Movie) and Andy Dick who's basically playing himself as Boingo the Bunny; annoying and camp which i always find funny. Original songs sung by the cast (and there's a fair few of them) are also horrendous and horrible, they try to be random, funny and silly but are irritating with no comedic value whatsoever. There's nothing in this film that is original, despite the concept. It tried too hard to be funny when it wasn't, it tried too hard to be original and it wasn't, it tried too hard to be wacky, zany and crazy in its lunacy that it just became embarrassing to watch. There is no sense of comic timing here either, jokes are thrown at you demanding you laugh at them, and it got to the point that i just wanted to turn the film off. It gets to the point where a simple knock-knock joke would be hard for them to tell as they would over-do it with a song and dance number thus taking it out of context, just to make it more entertaining; more excruciating more like. Simple fact is the people who made this film just didn't know how to tell jokes.
I don't care about badly designed and animated visuals, as long as everything else works, but nothing else did here. If the animation is terrible then it's the ideas, comedy and dialogue which have to be the strong aspects. Whilst Hoodwinked's aim was this, it just couldn't pull it off. Looking at the documentary, i learned that the creators didn't want to have the best animation in the world, they just wanted to showcase their "original and funny" ideas. Well, it helps if you have talent first. And be funny.
Sad to say, this is one of the worst animated films i've seen in recent years. I guess iv'e just seen too many comedies/animation to see anything good in this. I recommend South Park if you want something similar yet better. It's badly animated sure, but at least it's consistently competent in its ideas and humour.
Kudos for the creators for trying to do something different, funny and original, it's just that they needed to be different, funny and original in the first place; and silly voices and stupid songs aren't. Instantly forgettable and a waste of time
Animation and character designs here are awful but that's not what the film's aim was. The goal was instead to create an original and satirical comedy using simplistic character design that epitomise their literature counterparts to lead the viewer into thinking it's a simple kid's movie/retelling of the traditional story when in actual fact the style, the character's attitudes, personality and motives turn out to be radical and unexpected to throw us intentionally. "What you think you are watching your'e not" is the film's main motto, "Forget what you've seen, and what you think you know" best describes the pitch of the film .Unfortunately, in my honest opinion, it just couldn't manage it. Not by a long shot.
An interesting and what should be a fun and satirical concept which the Shrek films touch upon lightly, and whilst Hoodwinked! is a full-fledged CG animated feature based on this idea i felt the Shrek movies do it justice a whole lot better. I was immensely bored whilst watching this film, more so than i ever have been in a while. The film was so bad in its executions that there was literally nothing in it to keep me up except to try and find something to like in the dialogue and voice acting. Typically in an animated movie these days there's your usual roster of Hollywood celebrities providing the voices and here we have Anne Hathaway, Glen Close and James Belushi all in instantly forgettable roles. None of them did anything memorable and it seemed they were only half interested too.
The only voices worth mentioning here are Patrick Warburton as The Wolf (though nowhere near as good a performance as his from Bee Movie) and Andy Dick who's basically playing himself as Boingo the Bunny; annoying and camp which i always find funny. Original songs sung by the cast (and there's a fair few of them) are also horrendous and horrible, they try to be random, funny and silly but are irritating with no comedic value whatsoever. There's nothing in this film that is original, despite the concept. It tried too hard to be funny when it wasn't, it tried too hard to be original and it wasn't, it tried too hard to be wacky, zany and crazy in its lunacy that it just became embarrassing to watch. There is no sense of comic timing here either, jokes are thrown at you demanding you laugh at them, and it got to the point that i just wanted to turn the film off. It gets to the point where a simple knock-knock joke would be hard for them to tell as they would over-do it with a song and dance number thus taking it out of context, just to make it more entertaining; more excruciating more like. Simple fact is the people who made this film just didn't know how to tell jokes.
I don't care about badly designed and animated visuals, as long as everything else works, but nothing else did here. If the animation is terrible then it's the ideas, comedy and dialogue which have to be the strong aspects. Whilst Hoodwinked's aim was this, it just couldn't pull it off. Looking at the documentary, i learned that the creators didn't want to have the best animation in the world, they just wanted to showcase their "original and funny" ideas. Well, it helps if you have talent first. And be funny.
Sad to say, this is one of the worst animated films i've seen in recent years. I guess iv'e just seen too many comedies/animation to see anything good in this. I recommend South Park if you want something similar yet better. It's badly animated sure, but at least it's consistently competent in its ideas and humour.
Kudos for the creators for trying to do something different, funny and original, it's just that they needed to be different, funny and original in the first place; and silly voices and stupid songs aren't. Instantly forgettable and a waste of time
Verdict: Original in its concept, disastrous in it's execution. 4/10
No comments:
Post a Comment