Movie poster, Hoodwinked Too
Not All Fairy Tales Go By the Book.

I love good kids' movies and Hoodwinked Too! Good vs Evil certainly didn't disappoint. It picks up nicely from where the original (2006) Hoodwinked! left off, re-introducing us to all its great characters. The movie's army of slapstick characters provide both in the Hoodwinked! series their rich source of belly laughs-Helmut the ever-so-camp yodelling woodchopper, the blind banjo-plucking country-singing goat and Twitchy the over-caffeinated squirrel. I LOVE that squirrel!

It's these guys that really make both the original and the sequel terrifically funny. The characters of the Hoodwinked! series are beautifully developed and deliver a great script full of cheeky one-liners. Hoodwinked Too! also includes the almost mandatory comic references to movie classics, such as the Silence of the Lambs (with Hoodwinked's evil Bunny as an unambiguous clone of Dr. Hannibal Lecter), and Star Wars (with a voice-over suggestion to the movie's hero to 'Use the force, Red!' when she finds herself in a pickle).

Knowledge of the original Hoodwinked! might help appreciation of this sequel. I bumped into a mate at this screening who had not seen the 2006 original. While I was rolling around the floor laughing through much of the movie, my mate laughed perhaps five times during the whole screening. Clearly, the sequel doesn't invest the screen time to introduce the characters to the audience that was offered by the original. This is a shame, as so much of the comedy is dependent on understanding these characters. The original Hoodwinked! (and no doubt the sequel) were criticised for lesser quality animation; that it was not up to the animation standard of Shrek and Ice Age. For my money, animation quality runs a very poor second to character, plot and comedy. In this regard, the two Hoodwinked's are right up there with the Shrek's and are much better than Ice Age or Rio.

And the kids, what did they think of it? From a trio of eight-year old boys I got: "Good", "It was fantastic" and "It was really good, but it wasn't the best 3D". These warm to lukewarm responses (and the telling lack of laughs I heard from their side of the cinema), seem to suggest that this one might be a movie that leans more towards the parents than the kids - much of the humour is founded on references to 70s and 80s media and politics that simply goes over their heads.

However, the kids and I had a ball.

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by Allan Alderson Australian release 5 May 2011 For credits and official site details, see below Search Festivale for more work by the film-makers below. See also:

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Just the facts: Title: Hoodwinked Too (2011) Written by: Cory Edwards Todd Edwards Directed by: Mike Disa Running time: Rating: The Players: (voices) Glenn Close, Martin Short, Cheech Marin, Joan Cusack, David Ogden Stiers Official website: http://hoodwinkedtoomovie.com/ IMDb entry http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844993/combined For session times of current films, use the cinema listings on the Movie links page. For scheduled release dates, see the coming attractions section. For more information about this movie, check out the internet movie database. For the latest additions to Festivale, check out the change history section.