HW Two, Kanbar Entertainment, The Weinstein Company
Hayden Panettiere, Brad Garrett, Patrick Warburton, Joan Cusack, Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Glenn Close, Danny Pudi, Martin Short, Cheech Marin, David Ogden Stiers, Tommy Chong
The continuation of the 2005 story of Red Riding Hood (was Anne Hathaway, but this time around it’s Hayden Pannettiere) and her Granny (Glenn Close). The Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton) is back too as a cheeky partner who no longer seems interested in eating the poor girl. In this go round, Red is off learning Kung Fu at the mysterious monastery of the Sister Hood where she’s about to learn the skills needed to make the super truffle that only a true sister can make because she will know the last secret ingredient that has never been written down. Someone has stolen the recipe and if they find the last ingredient, it’s all over. Meanwhile, two little children Hansel and Gretel have been kidnapped by a wicked witch who, though threatening the children, is really just trapping granny to find out the last ingredient. Red has to come back to fight the wicked witch and save the poor little kids.
This is probably a sequel that should never have been made. There are some good things. The characters are all played by famous voice actors, so they are able to use their own character in defining the cartoon characters. And it’s quite a cast! The other good thing about it is that the humor is very adult, much like Rocky and Bullwinkle back in the days of Jay Ward when kids could watch it but only grown ups understood the political and sophisticated jokes. This is similar. Being an adult helps to understand most of the humor as it’s fairly witty in sarcastic humor. But the kids that I saw in the theater were not amused. The fact that it was in 3D added nothing to the film, and it was pretty boring for the kids. I’m sure they did not understand the story and it must have been hard for the little ones to sit through. But for grown ups, it’s not that exciting either. There have been so many wonderful animated films out lately, that I am pretty sure this one will fade away into obscurity very quickly.
I can’t recommend it for kids, and I also can’t recommend it for the grown ups either, so my best recommendation is to leave this one alone. It’s a shame, with all the great voices that they didn’t have a cute story to go with it, but it mostly it just got annoying is a big hurry. I was pretty disappointed in it. I expected a bit more.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Movie Review - Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil (2011) {PG},
