Critique: YOU'VE BEEN HOODWINKED, BABY!

A number of box-office predictors have scrambled egg on their faces today. On Friday, most places were predicting that the weekend movies would be dominated by a battle between GLORY ROAD and LAST HOLIDAY. Only a few considered HOODWINKED in the running, and even they thought the film would be wrestling for the number four slot at most.

And now it looks like HOODWINKED will finish number one, collecting over sixteen million dollars.

www.boxofficeprophets.com has this to say, “Hoodwinked is a very rare commodity. It's a CG animated film, but unlike all others is independent, and this opening could rock the industry. How is that possible? … Suddenly, we have a film that isn't forced to earn $30 million in its first weekend to be any kind of success, and can be shopped to any of the studios, big or little. “

Critics have been very mixed on this flick, so I thought I would weigh in with my own mini-review:

It’s funny. Very funny.

I’ve seen the flick three times, and I am not yet tired of it. The humor is made for adults, but enjoyable for children. It never goes crass (ala SHREK) or cloying (ala way-too-many-animations to name). It’s sassy without cynicism. And the story works.

Not to say it is a perfect film: It does start out too slow. And one character is never as cleverly tied into the story as he should be (the Woodsman -- but, dang, he’s still a funny character!). So I would give it an A instead of an A+, which puts it better than SHREK II and just below MONSTERS INC.

Congratulations, Cory, Todd and Tony!

As ever your servant,

-Sean