Hoodwinked: an ugly but earnest reinvention of Little Red Riding Hood

Polygon says Cory Edwards's Hoodwinked, released 20 years ago in January 2006, is an infamously ugly but surprisingly earnest animated musical comedy that subverts the Little Red Riding Hood tale.

The film reimagines familiar characters: a 12-year-old Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway) who has a black belt, a granny (Glenn Close) who shreds the slopes, a Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton) working as an investigative reporter, and a yodel-loving Woodsman (Jim Belushi). Though it follows Red returning to find her granny missing, the central hook is the mystery of the “Goody Bandit,” with the story structured to explain why the Wolf and Red arrived at Granny’s house when they did.

Produced by Edwards's Blue Yonder Films with most animation outsourced to the Philippines and a budget just under $8 million, Edwards embraced the film’s limitations by attempting to imitate photographed stop-motion rather than photorealistic CGI; as he told Animation World Network, “We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot trying to put every freckle and hair on photoreal creatures.” The Weinstein Company later signed on as distributor and required recasting of voice actors but otherwise did not heavily meddle, and while the sequel Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil failed commercially and creatively, the original’s legacy is of a flawed but sincere fairy-tale reinvention that many find worth watching despite its visuals.

Key Topics

Culture, Hoodwinked, Cory Edwards, Anne Hathaway, Blue Yonder Films