Hoodwinked

We took my 8 year old son, Marius, and twenty-five of his friends to see this for his birthday. Its a relatively low budget CGI animation, but tries hard to be quite sophisticated in concept and story. Perhaps a bit too sophisticated for its target audience. The over-riding comment from our group of seven and eight year olds was “weird”. Nonetheless, I think they enjoyed it. There were some very funny moments, from humour aimed both at the kids, as well as accompanying adults. Its a novel retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story as a Noir detective story from multiple perspectives, much like Akira Kurosawa in Rashomon. If you find this hard to imagine consider that it also includes elements of Manga style surrealism in the animation. You can begin to appreciate why kids may find it weird. I enjoyed it. Its not punching in the same category as Cars or Over The Hedge, but its fine for what it is and quite original.