Check Out the Trailer

This independently produced CG animated feature arrived in theaters in January and finished #1 at the box office the weekend it opened. Released by the Weinstein Co., the low-budget film features low-budget animation and a script that has enough good material for a nice half hour TV special, but not a feature.

Taking a page from SHREK, the film takes an irreverent look at fairy tales, mainly Little Red Riding Hood. Red (Anne Hathaway, PRINCESS DIARIES) longs to be able to leave the forest and see the world, but her Granny (Glenn Close, THE BIG CHILL) keeps a watchful eye on her so that she doesn’t get hurt while delivering goodies, which have made their family famous. However, someone is stealing the recipes of all the goodie makers, which leads up to the Wolf (Patrick Warburton, TV’s SEINFELD) dressing up like Granny while she’s tied up in the closet and then the Woodsman (Jim Belushi, TV’s LIFE WITH JIM) comes crashing through the window. So the police show up to make sense of the situation. This includes private eye Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST).

The film is really hit or miss. As Nicky Flippers interviews the four participants, we get four different stories RASHOMON-style. However, unlike Akira Kurasawa’s classic, we don’t learn more about every character from the different tales, only the character telling the story changes. This hurts the story in two ways 1) we loose the central character Red for too much of the film and 2) the Woodsman and Granny tales are clichéd and boring. Once the tales are over the narrative kicks in again, but it’s unconvincing because a major character’s actions toward another character do not jive with that major character’s secret once it’s revealed.

When the film is at its best, it’s delivering puns and jokes about fairy tales and the animals themselves. However, only the Wolf and his sidekick Twitchy escape as compelling characters. Too many times during the film a great sequence is followed by a bad one. In the end, the stronger opening parts fade away in our mind as the narrative derails toward a predictable and unsatisfying conclusion.