Warcraft: The Beginning Is Complicated Enough To Justify Sequels And Attention!

The Good: Moments of performance, Most of the effects, Detailed sense of setting and character motivations
The Bad: Expository characterizations, Some underwhelming characters and plot events, Short for something so detailed
The Basics: Warcraft: The Beginning has a wonderful, classic, sense of fantasy adventure intended for an audience that can handle an onslaught of plot threads and characters!


Despite my recent obsession with Star Wars: Battlefront, I am not a gamer. There are many types of geeks and I have not, for the bulk of my life, explored the video game geek branch of nerdom. As such, I had absolutely no knowledge of Warcraft or World Of Warcraft outside a passing understanding that the latter was a Massive Multiplayer Online Game phenomenon about a decade ago. So, I sat down to the film Warcraft: The Beginning completely unencumbered by what it should be, ready to watch and accept it as it is.

Warcraft: The Beginning drew me in with a remarkably effective preview trailer several months ago. I was impressed from the trailer with the quality of the special effects and when my wife and I learned that Duncan Jones, son of her idol David Bowie, was making his directorial debut with the film, it seemed like it was worthwhile to check the film out. Warcraft: The Beginning marks the first time in a long time that I recall seeing a film and wishing there were more of it. Warcraft: The Beginning is an instantly dense movie creating a surprisingly populous world with a wide variety of characters and creature types. The two hour film feels like watching an entire season of Game Of Thrones . . . but with actual magic and a wider variety of creatures. Almost from the outset, Warcraft: The Beginning feels like a classic sword and sorcery fantasy film and it has been so long since such a film was made as a blockbuster film (objectively viewed, The Lord Of The Rings featured Gandalf doing incredibly little in the way of sorcery, for example!) that despite its density, Warcraft: The Beginning feels surprisingly fresh.

The Orc world is dying, after generations of war with the humans, when Durotan has to leave his very pregnant wife Draka to join an immense war band of Orcs to pass through a portal and lay waste to another realm. Draka follows Durotan and goes into labor on the other side of the portal. The human Commander Anduin Lothar is recalled from the Dwarven city of Ironforge after the invasion. Lothar finds a mage who declares that fel magic (magic which uses life force) is in play and the humans prepare themselves for a siege. Lothar's journey takes him with the mage to the primary library of the magic users where they find Medivh, guardian of the realm's magic. Durotan is dismayed immediately when the war effort has the Orcs capturing civilian women and children instead of outright fighting warriors. When an Orc raiding party ambushes the human group containing Medivh and Khadgar (who renounced his mage oaths), Medivh uses fel magic against the orcs and the humans capture Garona.

As Durotan contemplates the new world in which the Orcs find themselves, he has the epiphany that when the Orc priest Gul'dan started using fel magic, that was when the Orc world started to degrade. Durotan believes that the new realm might be a great new home for the Orcs, but to keep it green and worth fighting for, Gul'dan should be deposed. Durotan approaches Khadgar and Garona to request a peaceful meeting. King Llane Wrynn listens to Garona and, on the advice of his queen, is willing to make peace with the Orcs. The King meets with Durotan, with Garona translating, where the Orc Chieftain tries to make peace with the humans for the sake of his people. But Green Orcs attack Durotan's Orcs, poisoning the King's trust. When the King's son is killed in battle, peace with the Orcs seems impossible

Warcraft: The Beginning effectively establishes a magical world, even if it never rises to the distinctiveness of Peter Jackson's cinematic rendition of Middle Earth. As the name suggests, Warcraft: The Beginning is a film rooted in conflict and the warmongering Orc priest seems to have somewhat generically targeted humans, though the motivation does seem to be his need for human prisoners for his fel magic. Part of the issue with Warcraft: The Beginning is that in creating such a well-rounded sense of place, time, and mysticism, most of the characters are very simply presented - and mostly through very straightforward exposition through character dialogue. By the time Elves first appear in Warcraft: The Beginning the realm is so well defined that they seem just like gratuitous windowdressing.

Ben Foster is an excellent choice for Medivh. Medivh is supposed to be a powerful mage and that requires an actor with intensity. If one is not casting for intensity based on age and experience - like Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart or David Warner - Foster is pretty much ideal casting. Indeed, seeing Foster as Medivh reminds the viewer of the breakout qualities he possessed on Six Feet Under (season three is reviewed here!) that made him a scene stealer. Foster prevents Medivh from ever appearing even remotely ridiculous and director Duncan Jones smartly never lets the special effects cover Foster's performance.

In a similar way, Paula Patton is an excellent choice for Garona. Jones clearly learned a thing or two from Michael Westmore's treatment of women in the Star Trek franchise; Westmore famously noted that it is pointless to cast a Hollywood beautiful woman and then obscure that beauty with prosthetics. Patton's Garona is a mixed-race Orc/human hybrid and that allows Jones to use more of Patton's natural beauty in embodying Garona. The scene with Patton and Foster together reflecting on their natures is arguably the heart of the character study within Warcraft: The Beginning.

Most of Warcraft: The Beginning is political, thematic and plot-based as opposed to character driven. While all of the various characters have their own motivations, they are presented to explain the various plot threads, as opposed to get the viewers to care about the characters. While there is a fairly major human death early on in Warcraft: The Beginning, the most empathetic moments of the film come in Durotan desperately seeking peace for his Orc clan.

The special effects in Warcraft: The Beginning are amazing, but they are far from perfect. While the Orcs are incredibly rendered and detailed and the costumes are impressive, not all of the effects are consistently rendered. Early on in Warcraft: The Beginning there is a wolf that is noticeably subpar in both its movements and the way its proportions continue to change. For the most part, though, Warcraft: The Beginning looks good.

Despite all of the various motivations and schemes, Warcraft: The Beginning basically boils down to an Orc invasion that presages a much bigger Orc invasion if the villainous Gul'dan has his way. The movie feels like a beginning and Warcraft: The Beginning is complex enough to make the viewer wish for more, even if it is only an average start.

For other films based upon video game sources, please check out my reviews of:
Silent Hill
Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time
Max Payne

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Aging No Better Than Its Initial Release, Hook Is Bloated And Boring!

The Good: Decent character arc for the protagonist
The Bad: Mediocre performances all around, Varying quality of special effects, Plot progression in the midsection is dull
The Basics: A family adventure that provides a live-action Peter Pan story, Hook is an unfortunately dull take that has the lawyer Peter Banning put on a quest to save his children by reverting to his prior persona of Peter Pan.


Last month, with the untimely death of Robin Williams, my wife and I felt an instant desire to rewatch works by Robin Williams that we had not seen in quite some time. For me, that took the form of wanting to watch The Fisher King (reviewed here!), for her she had a powerful desire to rewatch Hook. Hook was one of those films that I had managed to avoid in my young adulthood – when it was released, I was past the age where I had any interest in kid’s movies and I was still too young for the adult themes in Hook to resonate – but, as it turns out, it was one of the formative films for my wife. I recall the movie being on in the staff lounge when I worked at a summer camp (I avoided it by going off on my own to read, as I frequently did), but until my wife sat us down to watch it, I had never actually seen Hook. In watching Hook, I realized that I never paid tribute to the passing of Bob Hoskins, who also died this year (I’ll rectify that later this week!). Unfortunately for the legacies of Robin Williams, Bob Hoskins and the rest of the cast who will one day leave this work behind as part of their legacy, Hook is not an exceptional film in any way.

Steven Spielberg, who directed Hook, is famously quoted as saying “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning” and he certainly is right about that. Most movies do not develop or only do so in truly predictable, banal ways. Unfortunately, with Hook, Spielberg (who was not involved with writing the film) illustrates well that even with a solid sense of development, it is possible to make a pretty terrible movie. Hook is not the worst movie ever, but it is a film crippled by mediocrity, hampered by predictability and is so concerned with telling a specific story of one character’s arc that is completely neglects a sensible development for several of the other characters (most notably the titled villain).

While finding an audience should not be a huge problem, rewatching Hook is a great example of how a movie without a clear focus of to whom the story is being told can be troubling. The film is painfully boring for children for almost the first third, too goofy for adults in the second and third parts to pay off for adults and ultimately acts as an overlong The Little Rascals sketch with an obscenely long build-up.

Peter Banning is an American lawyer who hates flying on planes, is tremendously focused on his work, and neglects his two children most of the time. After missing his son, Jack’s, baseball game, Peter, his wife, and children head to London where Peter’s “great grandmother” Wendy is being honored for her lifetime of charity work for orphans. While Peter, Wendy and Moira are out at the dinner, Jack and Maggie are kidnapped from their beds by the malicious Captain Hook. Peter is miffed, though Wendy tries to get him to believe that he has to go to find the children. Peter is visited by Tinkerbell, who takes him to Neverland.

There, Peter awakens in the pirate’s village where he finds his children and Captain Hook. Hook slowly comes to accept that Banning is Peter Pan (even though Banning does not), but finds the straight-laced lawyer an unworthy opponent for his wrath. To save Peter’s life and the life of his children, Tinkerbell tells Hook that she can get Peter to remember who he is within three days and they can have the battle Hook wants. So, while Hook tries to convert Jack to his cause, Peter is taken to the Lost Boys where Rufio and his child gang retrain him to use his imagination and recall that he is Peter Pan.

The thing about Hook is that Hook is so dramatically underdeveloped in contrast to Peter that he comes across as a monolithic villain. He has had decades to get over the fact that Peter Pan cost him his hand and he essentially rules the seas around Neverland, so provoking a fight with Peter that could cause him to lose everything seems utterly moronic. Lacking a compelling villain who has a clear and compelling need for revenge, Hook becomes a somewhat ridiculous grudge match where one of the participants does not even bear a grudge!

Fortunately, Captain Hook is given the whole plotline that has him turning Jack Banning to his side, to drive a wedge between Peter and his own son. That concept at least makes Hook smart and gives Dustin Hoffman as Hook additional screentime.

But Hook is too straightforward otherwise to keep the interest of the viewer. Peter Banning was always going to go through the journey to realize that he was Peter Pan; everyone around him has been right all along. This was never going to be a reality-bending film experience where people surrounding Peter Banning are all crazy and they get wrong who Peter Pan has become. So, going into Hook, the deck is stacked against those hoping for an audacious film experience. Peter Banning’s arc from uptight lawyer to Peter Pan is actually remarkably good and well-developed. The entire film smartly moves Peter along on his journey of self-discovery (or rediscovery) in a way that works beautifully.

The acting in Hook is mediocre. Dustin Hoffman plays Hook as bored and goofy as opposed to truly menacing, so the hold Hook has over the other pirates does not seem at all realistic. Julia Roberts, due to the special effects process of making her appear smaller, seldom gets eyelines right for interacting with other actors. As a result, Tinkerbell seems disconnected from other characters and Roberts is clearly not interacting with Robin Williams or Dustin Hoffman in most of the scenes they share. Robin Williams is fine as Peter, though he has absolutely no on-screen chemistry with Caroline Goodall (who plays Peter’s wife, Moira) and he fails to land a key scene where Peter Pan tells Jack that the happy thought that allows him to fly is related to his son. Poor Bob Hoskins is relegated to the role of ridiculous Disney-style comic relief sidekick as Smee.

The result is that Hook has a clear beginning, middle, and end and a protagonist whose story develops, but none of it is truly compelling. Too slow to be a great kid’s movie, too goofy to entertain adults, Hook fizzles.

For other works with Caroline Goodall, please check out my reviews of:
My Life In Ruins
Alias - Season 5
The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement
The Princess Diaries
The Mists Of Avalon
Schindler’s List

3/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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If The Avengers Were Made As A Science Fiction Comedy: Guardians Of The Galaxy!

The Good: Good humor, Decent soundtrack, Good plot development
The Bad: Rather obvious (and rushed) character development, Nothing exceptional in terms of performances, Distracting 3-D in several points
The Basics: Guardians Of The Galaxy further expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe while amusing viewers . . . without resonating the same way as the prior installments.


Guardians Of The Galaxy has a number of reasonable comparisons to the giant Marvel film The Avengers (reviewed here!), not just because both are set within the same storytelling universe. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was established in Phase One (reviewed here!) as a surprisingly grounded place: Tony Stark needed time to train within his suit of armor, Steve Rogers was a unique warrior set in place as the only stopgap against an army powered by an extraterrestrial device and for the bulk of his time on Earth, Thor was without his godlike powers. For all of the supernatural and comic book conceits that exist in science fiction and comic book movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe did not employ most of them (save in the Hulk movies, which is arguably why they failed). In other words, most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe strove to generally recreate the real world and then add slight twists to it and explore how “real people” and the “real world” would react to those twists.

Until the climax of The Avengers, when an interstellar alien force invades, and outside the climactic event of Thor: The Dark World (reviewed here!), the Marvel Cinematic Universe has worked hard to keep a realist sensibility to itself. Taking an entirely different tact is the new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians Of The Galaxy. Guardians Of The Galaxy, as the name implies, is set (mostly) in the farthest reaches of the galaxy (where a sizable population still looks mostly human) and explores the larger consequences of the artifacts that the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been introducing. Those artifacts, like the Tesseract and the seed in the Thor sequel, are given an explicit name in Guardians Of The Galaxy: they are Infinity Stones (which Marvel geeks knew years ago). Guardians Of The Galaxy introduces another one and reveals what their purpose is . . . along with the motivation Thanos had for hunting the Tesseract in The Avengers. More than just in its outlandish setting, Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a much less grounded place. Guardians Of The Galaxy feels like exactly what it is: a film based on a comic book.

That is not to say Guardians Of The Galaxy is not good. It is. Guardians Of The Galaxy is a fun and funny science fiction comedy, continuing the tradition of the niche genre like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (reviewed here!) or Men In Black (reviewed here!). Unlike the former, Guardians Of The Galaxy lacks a sense of theme and universal resonance and treads more toward entertainment than enlightenment.

Opening in 1988, Peter Quill’s mother dies and the young boy flees into the night where he is promptly abducted by aliens. Twenty-six years later, Quill is scavenging on a dead world where he recovers an orb from the ruins. Moments after he gets the item he was sent for, he squares off against Korath and his forces. Evading them and retreating to his ship, the Milano, Quill decides to betray his employer and sell the recovered Orb on his own. While Quill heads to Xandar to sell the Orb, the villainous alien Ronan dispatches Gamora (who volunteers) to recover it. When the potential buyer for the Orb freaks out – after learning Ronan is after the artifact – Quill is attacked by Gamora, a sentient genetically-modified, cybernetically enhanced raccoon named Rocket and his humanoid plant companion Groot, and the Nova police force.

The quartet is imprisoned on a remote world, the Kyln, where virtually everyone wants to kill Gamora, especially Drax The Destroyer. Quill manages to save Gamora’s life and refocuses Drax on finding and killing Ronin. The quintet stages an incredible escape from the Kyln by working together, with the four aliens actually waiting for Quill when he goes back for his prized mix tape. Hunted by Ronan, Quill’s regular employer Yondu Udonta and the police force from Nova, Quill and his compatriots become determined to keep the Orb from falling into the hands of Ronan and Thanos when Ronan reveals that the Orb contains an Infinity Stone with virtually unlimited power to destroy. Working together, Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot must protect the citizens of Xandar from the genocidal plans of Ronan and Thanos.

In many ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy is a very typical science fiction film. In fact, its reliance upon humor makes it fun, but also as formulaic as virtually every comedy to grace the big screen . . . ever. Guardians Of The Galaxy transforms the Marvel Cinematic Universe simply by realigning the physics of the galaxy to allow virtually every comic book conceit as opposed to conforming to realistic physics. That makes the fight scenes in Guardians Of The Galaxy extraordinarily dynamic and animated, especially when Groot and Rocket are involved. They hop around without clear boundaries on their abilities (Groot, for example, is entirely inscrutable and only reveals the extent of his powers and abilities when they become relevant and necessary).

Peter Quill is a decent anti-hero; he does the right thing when it suits him, but he is a Han Solo-esque bounty hunter who also strangles small animals to use them as microphones when the mood takes him. In his quest to get respect in the galactic underground as Star Lord, Quill does not actually distinguish himself in any strong or meaningful way. Less the function of his personality or values, Quill manages to survive Guardians Of The Galaxy simply by biology. Heavily alluded to in the film’s very first scene, Peter Quill is not simply a human, but his heritage is only a minor subplot in the larger film.

Far more of a component of Guardians Of The Galaxy is establishing and then defying the premises of the universe and characters Peter Quill is a part of. In this regard, Guardians Of The Galaxy is painfully formulaic. Elements that are established in an obvious way include Groot’s limited vocabulary (he, we are told, only speaks the three words “I am Groot,” though Rocket seems able to interpret what he means by it as the film goes on), Gamora’s absolute refusal to dance, and the obviously seeded gift Quill receives from his dying mother that he has not opened over the lapsed twenty-six years. For sure, viewers need a film with character development to make any movie worth watching, but Guardians Of The Galaxy is like watching a checklist of the elements that are used to establish the characters getting checked off. Virtually everything established about a character, up to and including Drax’s lifelong struggle with metaphor, is defied by the film’s end. Guardians Of The Galaxy is obviously intended to build a franchise, but the way the film ends, there is almost nowhere to go for the characters that will not force the writers to completely redefine them. This would be analogous to Bruce Banner learning to control his ability to transform in Hulk (such an ability would have left the character with nothing compelling for The Incredible Hulk or The Avengers). So, in some ways, Guardians Of The Galaxy undoes its own attempt to build a franchise by making a solid (if formulaic) story.

In a similar fashion, Guardians Of The Galaxy is nothing extraordinary on the acting front. John C. Reilly is (mostly) goofy as the Nova Police Officer Dey and Glenn Close is appropriately authoritative as Nova Prime, the leader of Xandar. Djimon Hounsou plays the villainous Korath with virtually the same presence that he has played many other adversaries over the years. The film’s lead, Chris Pratt, plays Quill as an everyman and he does so with a similarly goofy quality (but without the slouch) to his character from Parks And Recreation. Even Zoe Saldana (who plays Gamora) is used in such a familiar way that director James Gunn doesn’t even bother hiding the allusion to her playing Uhura by throwing her in a miniskirt at the movie’s end.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is charming and worth watching, but it is hardly a great and enduring film the way some other, recent super hero films have managed to be.

For other works in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, please check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Iron Fist - Season 1
"What If . . . " - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Surprisingly Pleasant Sequel: Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil Develops The Franchise Better Than Expected!

The Good: Decent character development, Largely funny, Decent voice acting.
The Bad: Very predictable plot, No commentary track.
The Basics: Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil is an engaging continuation of Hoodwinked! that has a decent theme on the importance of teamwork, despite featuring adult allusions for much of the humor.


Almost three years ago, I met the woman who would become my wife. After a surprisingly short time of communicating via e-mail and online chats, she invited me out to meet her in Michigan and despite the fact that I could not actually afford it, I took her up on her invitation. That trip changed my life; we were married a little over four months later and we have been happily married since. That first weekend, we shared movies with one another. I brought Magnolia (reviewed here!), which she still holds against me to this day. I also rather stupidly, apparently, informed her that I had "a bit of a thing" for Anne Hathaway when she pulled out a copy of Hoodwinked! for us to watch together. Despite her general loathing of Anne Hathaway (her films and singing voice at least), I find it deeply ironic that she had an Anne Hathaway film in her collection before me. We both enjoyed Hoodwinked! (reviewed here!) and watch it an average of once a year. So, when we heard about Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil, we were both pretty excited (she was probably a little more excited considering Hathaway was not going to be in it). Unfortunately, the movie was only played locally for a week before it disappeared from our theaters and we missed seeing it on the big screen.

But last night, that changed when our local library got in Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil for us. The sequel, featuring Hayden Panettiere in the role Anne Hathaway had in the original, is a decent sequel, which does a good job of continuing the original and developing it beyond what it was. While Hoodwinked! was focused on Red Riding Hood becoming an empowered heroine while cracking the case of the goodie bandit, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil illustrates the challenges to the Happily Ever After Agency when Red Riding Hood is not available.

Having, presumably, been on several missions with the Happily Ever After Agency following their induction, Red Riding Hood has taken a leave of absence to learn with the Sister Hoods in the mountains. She is, thus, cut off from the group when Granny Puckett is abducted and the Big Bad Wolf botches the case they were on when it happened. Granny, in trying to save the kidnaped Hansel and Gretel, is captured herself. Nicky Flippers contacts Red Riding Hood, who quickly comes to believe that Granny's abduction has to do with her knowledge of how to make a devastatingly powerful truffle.

Journeying to the Big City, Red Riding Hood rejects working with the Big Bad Wolf, irked because she blames him for Granny's capture in the first place. Trying to milk the local Giant for information, though, she is bailed out by the Wolf and soon comes to rely upon him for help. Working together, the pair infiltrates the castle in search of Granny. All the while, Granny comes to realize that her capture is no accident and she finds the responsible party to the crime!

Having not read anyone else's reviews of Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil, I'm not exactly sure why so few people actually seemed to enjoy the film. For my money, what I liked was pretty solid: the movie progresses the story and characters without simply rehashing the successful elements of the first movie. For sure, the plot is ridiculously simple and predictable, but there is a great deal of adult humor that hinges on an adult knowledge of popular culture. As an Alpha Geek, I can appreciate the many references and the fact that there are very few fairy tale allusions makes the work much more relevant to adults than children.

That said, the dominant theme in Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil is that is is important to work well with others. While this might seem like a terribly juvenile idea for an otherwise adult film, it works well as a reminder to adults in these cash-strapped times. No, it's pretty much the solid element for younger people in the movie. But why it worked for me was that it effectively illustrated how playing for a team does allow the strengths of each member to be used, something which is not often seen in movies today. Moreover, the theme is well-developed and Red Riding Hood painfully illustrates how a team is weakened when the most potent negative traits of a team member are allowed to dominate. Red Riding Hood's absolute belief in herself is over-the-top arrogance, which leads to a disastrous meeting with the Giant. But when she begins to rely upon her teammates, her innate strength and intelligence are able to come through.

The animation in Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil is quite good and the vocal performances are decent as well. Glenn Close reprises her role of Granny with ease and Patrick Warburton and David Ogden Stiers are trained hands at vocal acting, so their performances are flawless as far as vocal emoting goes. Hayden Panettiere does a decent job stepping into the role of Red Riding Hood and she pretty much makes it her own. Amy Poehler, Joan Cusack and Bill Hader do fine as Hansel, Gretel and the Witch, though Martin Short noticeably does not perform Kirk quite like Belushi did in the first film. For the most part, though, the acting is decent, easily living up to the expectations left from Hoodwinked!.

On DVD, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil comes with a featurette on the vocal performances for the movie that is dominated by clips from the movie and storyboards. There is not a commentary track, but there are three music videos (none of which are stellar). Regardless, the primary material is engaging enough to entertain.

For other works featuring Amy Poehler, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Southland Tales
Arrested Development

6.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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A Hilarious Fairy Tale Parody Begins With Hoodwinked!

The Good: Funny, Decent mix of parody and general humor, Good story, Decent animation
The Bad: Light on character development, SHORT!
The Basics: When Little Red Ridinghood visits Granny, an altercation with the Wolf ensues and an investigation reveals a larger conspiracy in the forest, in Hoodwinked, a funny, animated film!


I cannot remember the last movie that was only PG that I both laughed at and was satisfied by. Allow me to amend that: I cannot recall the last film before Hoodwinked that was PG that I laughed and and was completely satisfied by. Some might look at it as a cheap Shrek knockoff, but Hoodwinked has what Shrek didn't for me; more than one joke. My main problem with Shrek was that it essentially sought humor from the same joke over and over, with almost all of the humor being remarkably similar reversals based on the idea that the fairy tales were a lot more edgy and relayed with broader details than the finer points of "reality."

Hoodwinked does not do that. Instead, it recasts the story of Little Red Riding Hood as a whodunit with various parts telling their take on the story as part of a criminal investigation into the theft of the recipes from all of the major bakers in the forest. The humor tends to be more universal, fresh and funny than that of the more repetitive Shrek. And on its own, there is plenty to keep finding in Hoodwinked that is funny, making it worth returning to!

Red, granddaughter of Granny, is a spunky girl who is eager to protect the bakers and sweetmakers of the forest whom she notices are all going out of business rather suddenly. Charged with protecting the recipes to Granny's bakery, Red flees into the woods to get the recipe book to safety. At Granny's house, though, she finds a poorly disguised Wolf who seems quite interested in the book. An altercation ensues, wherein Red holds her own against the Wolf, a crazed Woodsman breaks in wielding an ax and Granny is revealed to be very much alive, though she is tied up in the closet. The police arrive and while they are quick to jump to conclusions, Inspector Nicky Flippers enters to get full depositions, believing that not everything is as it seems.

What follows then are the stories as told by Red, the wolf, the woodsman and Granny. Red describes her attempts to keep all of the bakeries from closing, even as more of them are forced out of business. Dogged by the wolf, her day has been hectic and she has escaped death at several turns. The wolf, then, is given the chance to tell his story, which casts him as an investigative reporter on the case of finding out why all of the sweet shops have been shuttered. The woodsman describes his behavior as method acting gone wrong and Granny tells her story of training in extreme sports. Flippers, then, finds the common thread in the stories and together they bring the guilty party to justice!

First off, the two big strikes against this animated film are the predictability of the plot and the short duration of the movie. At eighty minutes, Hoodwinked is barely a movie and it is unfortunate that the DVD version did not restore the deleted scenes back into the movie to get it up to a respectable - feature-length - film. As well, the moment the real perpetrator enters the movie, adults will pretty instantly get who it is as it is fairly obvious to anyone watching closely. That said, the process that the story takes to unfold is generally enjoyable and Hoodwinked works as a result of that.

Hoodwinked is funny. Written by the co-directors, Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech, Hoodwinked is a collection of pretty fast deliveries, strong deadpans and utterly ridiculous songs. So, for example, one of the funniest bits is Red describing how she got her nickname and its relation to the hood. Red straightforward telling the detectives that she likes red and she is not often found wearing anything other than the hooded jacket is delivered in a way that is laugh-out-loud funny. As well, the goat, who is enchanted (supposedly) so he must sing all of his dialogue, who sings a song about his various horns kills time in the movie and makes for a rather laughable sequence.

The narrative technique works fairly well to keep the story moving, even if it is a little predictable. Like most detective stories, the interrogation of various people yields a different perspective on common events and as Flippers connects the events of one story to another, the broader narrative is created. Point of view stories have been chic of late, but Hoodwinked works because it feels more like an organic story and not like it is being a slave to trends. The result is an intriguing take on a story that is treated as simple and straightforward. The new take on it, the concept that there are more perspectives to the story than the traditional interpretation makes for a decent movie. Hoodwinked works because the narrative techniques force the writers to innovate a completely different story than the traditional "Little Red Ridinghood" story and the shading and depth they come up with for the various characters - while often silly - serves a much more interesting story than the simple, oft-told fairy tale.

Character development is tough to discuss in a film like Hoodwinked, though. All of the characters are given extensive backstories, usually through straightforward exposition. They all have more depth - even if it is absurd and modern, as are the cases of the woodsman and Granny's stories - and character than the characters in the original fairy tales. However, there is a somewhat generic, assigned, joke-like quality to virtually all of the characterizations. In other words, the story is not about the characters and how they develop so much as it is about the way the characters are turned on the expectations we, the viewers have for them.

That said, Hoodwinked has a pretty impressive cast, which does seem to be the norm for such animated films of late. The all-star cast includes Anne Hathaway as Red, Glenn Close as Granny, Patrick Warburton as the wolf, and Xzibit as Chief Grizzly. The irony here is that the only other acting I have yet seen rapper Xzibit do was in The X-Files: I Want To Believe and he was cast in essentially the same role!

Nicky Flippers is voiced by one of my favorites, David Ogden Stiers and it is nice to see that Kelsey Grammar isn't getting all of the dignified voice acting roles. For all of my appreciation of Grammar and his work, Stiers has a dignity and presence in his vocal performances that is at least on par with Grammar or Patrick Stewart's and the role of the investigator suits him perfectly. Stiers opens the film with a voice over that immediately establishes both a comic and investigative tone to the movie and it works exceptionally well.

The other decent surprise for me was in the voice acting of Anne Hathaway. I still recall seeing commercials when I was younger for the television show she was on on FOX where she became the breakout character, based - largely, one supposes - on her looks. Given that this is an animated film, Hathaway's looks do not factor into her performance as Red at all. The result, is a performance one must judge entirely on the merits, not the mythos. And Hathaway presents Red with a sense of comic timing and vocal expressiveness that reinforces the idea that she is one of the premiere actresses of our time. She is funny, articulate and her acting is solid from start to finish as Red.

As for the animation, I have seem some griping about it, but I actually like it. Hoodwinked has a distinctive computer generated animation look and feel to it that is unique to this production. It is not trying to be real, nor is it trying to be a traditional cartoon as far as the animation quality goes. The result, is a visually-exciting, three-dimensional environment that brings the story to life in an entertaining and fulfilling way.

On DVD, Hoodwinked has deleted scenes and featurettes on the making of the movie and the telling (or re-telling) of the story and they are nice additions for a film that holds up surprisingly well over multiple viewings. The jokes that are most risque will easily pass over the heads of younger audiences and the animation style, complete with big-eyed bunnies and bright colors, will keep them entertained for the spectacle while older audiences enjoy the actual humor and cleverness of the movie.

For works featuring Anne Hathaway, please check out my reviews of:
Anne Hathaway For Wonder Woman!
One Day
Love And Other Drugs
Family Guy Presents: It's A Trap!
Alice In Wonderland
Valentine's Day
Twelfth Night Soundtrack
Bride Wars
Rachel Getting Married
Passengers
Get Smart
The Devil Wears Prada
Brokeback Mountain
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Ella Enchanted
The Princess Diaries

7/10

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© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.









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