

Our film club’s Rashomon series continues this month with the 2005 animated feature film Hoodwinked! which is a healthy mixture of Kurosawa’s film classic and the equally classic Little Red Riding Hood story. A bit of the Usual Suspects is thrown in as well, as you can see from the image above.

Hoodwinked! was written and directed by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech, with the Edwards brothers the only ones with any real previous feature film experience, having worked on the 1999 film Chillicothe. Hoodwinked! was one of the first computer animated indie films, which gave the team more creative control but also stricter budgetary limits. Produced with only around $8 million dollars, the team’s approach to the art was influenced by the budget and resulted in a slightly stop motion type of design.

Although Hoodwinked! received a mixed reaction from critics at the time of release, the film was a major box office hit for its indie producers and the Weinstein Company which distributed the film, earning over $100 million. A sequel, Hoodwinked Too!: Hood vs. Evil, was released in 2011.

Let’s get the discussion going!