- A new spin on an old fable. In this film, Red, Granny, The Big Bad Wolf and the Woodman, all face Detective Flippers as he attempts to determine the 'real' events of the Little Red Riding Hood story. Original songs and witty humor fill this fun and adventurous film. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â CHILDREN Rating:Â PG Age:Â 796019791090 UPC:Â 796019791090 Manufacture
Meet Doogal, an adorable candy-loving mutt on a mission to save the world. In this delightful 3D computer-animated adventure, Doogal must prevent the evil sorcerer Zeebad (Jon Stewart) from freezing the earth forever. Joining Doogal (Daniel Tay) on his quest are pals Dylan (Jimmy Fallon), a guitar-playing rabbit, Ermintrude (Whoopi Goldberg), an opera-singing cow, and Brian (William H. Macy), a bashful snail. Hopping on a magic train (Chevy Chase), they travel over ice-capped mountains, navigate fiery pits of lava, and sail across va! st oceans on the journey of a lifetime. Along the way, they learn that the most powerful weapon of all is their friendship â€" which even Zeebad’s magic cannot destroy.A herd of American celebrities--from Whoopi Goldberg to Kevin Smith--have been corralled to redub
Doogal, formerly a CGI cartoon from England called
The Magic Roundabout based on a French stop-motion tv show from the 1960s called
Le Manege Enchante. The title character is a dustmop with a face--presumably a dog of some sort--whose craving for sweets inadvertently traps his beloved owner Florence in a frozen carousel and unleashes an evil wintry wizard named Zeebad (voiced by Jon Stewart,
The Daily Show). Doogal and his ragtag group of friends--singing cow Ermintrude (Goldberg,
Sister Act), hopeful snail Brian (William H. Macy,
Fargo), slacker rabbit Dylan (Jimmy Fallon,
Fever Pitch), and a choo-choo train (Chevy Chase,
Fletch)--must find three enchante! d diamonds to stop Zeebad and bring spring back to the world. ! Presumab ly,
Doogal's target audience is the very young, yet the dialogue (rewritten for the American market) is crammed with allusions to adult fare like
Saturday Night Live and
Pulp Fiction. In fact--though it may have seemed differently with the original script--the entire movie comes across as an ungainly patchwork stitched together from scenes from
The Wizard of Oz,
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
The Matrix,
Ice Age, and much more. The effect is not so much funny as inexplicable. Also featuring the voices of Judi Dench (
Iris), Ian McKellen (
X-Men), and pop star Kylie Minogue.
--Bret FetzerFeatures include:
•MPAA Rating: G
•Format: DVD
So you think you know the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Don’t be too sure. . . . One of your favorite fairy tales is turned upside-down and inside-out in what the L.A. Times called "high-energy, imaginative entertainment." With irreverent ! storytelling, spunk and wit, Hoodwinked delivers a comedy caper for the young, the young at heart and everyone in between. When the police arrive at Granny’s cottage in the woods to answer a domestic disturbance call, it looks like just another open-and-shut case. But Red, Granny, the Big Bad Wolf and the Woodsman are not your usual suspects, as they have their own dark secrets, wily deceptions and conflicting accounts of the crime. Together, they must put aside their differences and find their own original twist on Happily Ever After in this "raucous, genre-busting, animated gem (Entertainment Weekly, The Must List)."
Hoodwinked fuses the classic fairy tale of
Little Red Riding Hood with the crisscrossing storylines of
film noir--pretty ambitious stuff for a computer-animated cartoon. The police cordon off Grandma's cottage and an amphibious version of William Powell named Nicky Flippers (voiced by David Ogden Stiers,
M*A*S*H) begins interrog! ating the suspects: A Little Red in bell-bottoms (Anne Hathawa! y,
El la Enchanted), a Wolf turned investigative journalist (Patrick Warburton,
The Woman Chaser), a snow-boarding Granny (Glenn Close,
101 Dalmatians), and a dimwitted would-be Woodsman (Jim Belushi,
Curly Sue), each of whom have very different reasons for ending up in that cottage living room. The visual style of
Hoodwinked mixes a clunky, video-game look with an homage to the stop-motion puppetry of
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other Rankin-Bass holiday specials. While sometimes awkward, there are also moments of surreal beauty, such as when a depressed Red wanders through a field of blue and red flowers--and moments of lunatic comedy, such as the Schnitzel song, which is irresistibly bizarre. The
Shrek-style pop-culture references grow annoying, but the left-field goofiness of a yodeling goat points toward a far more distinct and delightful comic world. Also featuring the voices of Anthony Anderson (
Kangaroo Jack), rap! per Xzibit, and an especially witty turn by Andy Dick (
NewsRadio) as a deceptively cute bunny rabbit.
--Bret Fetzer
