With Pixar constantly setting the artistic bar higher and higher and companies like Blue Star regularly tapping into the cash cow commercial box office zeitgeist, a wannabe family filmmaker really has to up their game -- especially in the hotly contested arena of animation. So it's kind of surprising that those capable year-end Best-of mavericks, The Weinsteins, have decided to take on said titans with the sequel to a minor hit that few will even remember seeing. After being dragged through some specious legal channels over the last few years, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil is ready to battle blue macaws and anthropomorphized garden gnomes for 2011 bragging rights. Sadly, for a movie that tries so very hard to be clever and witty, it ends up being cold and overwrought.
While she's off training at a culinary school-cum-deadly dojo, Red Riding Hood (Hayden Panettiere) has left fellow Happy Ending Agency specialists Granny (Glenn Close), Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton), and screwy squirrel Twitchy (Cory Edwards) to handle the kidnapping case of Hansel (Bill Hader) and Gretel (Amy Pohler). Apparently, Verushka the Witch (Joan Cusack) wants the unusual ransom of a recipe for the portly pair, and knows that only Red and her Sister-Hood have said secret knowledge. After all, the resulting truffle pastry actually renders the consumer unstoppable. Under the guidance of HEA leader Mr. Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) and with the help of old friend Kirk the Woodsman (Martin Short), the team will try to defeat the sorceress and rescue the children before her evil gastronomic plot can come to fruition.
Hoodwinked Too! suffers from what we film critics like to call "scriptus overstufficus," otherwise known as too many unneeded punchlines in a single screenplay. It's as if the writers decided that each line needed to be a sarcastic, ironic pun of another spoof-splashed homage to a previous nursery rhyme/pop culture/fairy tale reference -- and then, just for good measure, they'd add in a few more jokes. The result is a comedy that struggles mightily to make you smile. It's akin to being beaten over the head by a stand-up with a sledgehammer -- and yes, the Gallagher reference is intentional, since both share a similarly paltry number of laughs. This is a movie that groans under its own ambitions, one that wouldn't know subtlety if it stood up and smacked each individual character in the generic CG. Everything is pitched over into hyperactivity, leaving the viewer breathless and floundering for a frame of reference.
Granted, the co-opting and combining of famous fictional characters is fun, for a moment. Even the mob boss buffoonery of Brad Garret's Giant is elevated by his metal beanstalk nightclub. Similarly, the Dark Towers Apartments offers a nifty visual nod to Stephen King and his famed gunslinger series. But then Hoodwinked Too! can't leave well enough alone. It drags out the unnecessary stunt casting (Cheech and Chong as ethically obtuse pigs) and that hoary old 2011 cliche -- 3D. As a result, chase scenes must swoop in and around cartoon obstacles, the better to give the crowd its gimmick-guided money's worth. The original Hoodwinked got by on some of these stylistic mandates. But it also offered an intriguing Rashomon-inspired narrative that allowed for a more intellectualized end result. Hoodwinked Too! feels like the leftovers from the last Shrek.
In the dog-eat-cartoon-dog arena of animation, it takes more than flash and a bunch of Brothers Grimm gags to succeed. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil believes that its over-larded lampoon can win over such cynics. Sadly, it can't -- and won't.
While she's off training at a culinary school-cum-deadly dojo, Red Riding Hood (Hayden Panettiere) has left fellow Happy Ending Agency specialists Granny (Glenn Close), Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton), and screwy squirrel Twitchy (Cory Edwards) to handle the kidnapping case of Hansel (Bill Hader) and Gretel (Amy Pohler). Apparently, Verushka the Witch (Joan Cusack) wants the unusual ransom of a recipe for the portly pair, and knows that only Red and her Sister-Hood have said secret knowledge. After all, the resulting truffle pastry actually renders the consumer unstoppable. Under the guidance of HEA leader Mr. Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) and with the help of old friend Kirk the Woodsman (Martin Short), the team will try to defeat the sorceress and rescue the children before her evil gastronomic plot can come to fruition.
Hoodwinked Too! suffers from what we film critics like to call "scriptus overstufficus," otherwise known as too many unneeded punchlines in a single screenplay. It's as if the writers decided that each line needed to be a sarcastic, ironic pun of another spoof-splashed homage to a previous nursery rhyme/pop culture/fairy tale reference -- and then, just for good measure, they'd add in a few more jokes. The result is a comedy that struggles mightily to make you smile. It's akin to being beaten over the head by a stand-up with a sledgehammer -- and yes, the Gallagher reference is intentional, since both share a similarly paltry number of laughs. This is a movie that groans under its own ambitions, one that wouldn't know subtlety if it stood up and smacked each individual character in the generic CG. Everything is pitched over into hyperactivity, leaving the viewer breathless and floundering for a frame of reference.
Granted, the co-opting and combining of famous fictional characters is fun, for a moment. Even the mob boss buffoonery of Brad Garret's Giant is elevated by his metal beanstalk nightclub. Similarly, the Dark Towers Apartments offers a nifty visual nod to Stephen King and his famed gunslinger series. But then Hoodwinked Too! can't leave well enough alone. It drags out the unnecessary stunt casting (Cheech and Chong as ethically obtuse pigs) and that hoary old 2011 cliche -- 3D. As a result, chase scenes must swoop in and around cartoon obstacles, the better to give the crowd its gimmick-guided money's worth. The original Hoodwinked got by on some of these stylistic mandates. But it also offered an intriguing Rashomon-inspired narrative that allowed for a more intellectualized end result. Hoodwinked Too! feels like the leftovers from the last Shrek.
In the dog-eat-cartoon-dog arena of animation, it takes more than flash and a bunch of Brothers Grimm gags to succeed. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil believes that its over-larded lampoon can win over such cynics. Sadly, it can't -- and won't.
