When "Shrek" came out in 2001, a lot of animation studios decided to hop on the bandwagon to try to copy the fractured fairy tale genre that was popular at the time. For the most part, none of those movies made a good impression. Though "Hoodwinked!" was an interesting exception. The film was where the story of Little Red Riding Hood was turned into a crime drama and each of the characters involved in the story was questioned by the police and asked to tell their side of the story. I enjoyed parts of it more than I should've since the story and characters were brilliantly written, but I thought the animation was simply dreadful that I didn't exactly give it a full recommendation. I don't hate it at all, but I just don't think I can rewatch it with the horrendous animation. With that said though, I am confident enough to say that its sequel "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil" is terrible. This film really frustrated me and made me mad to no end. I haven't hated an animated sequel in quite some time, but here we are. This film really did the trick.
At the crime organization Happily Ever After Agency, our heroes Wolf (Patrick Warburton), his squirrel assistant Twitchy (Cory Edwards), and Granny Pucket (Glen Close) are rescuing the kidnapped Hansel and Gretel (Bill Hader and Amy Poehler) from the evil witch Verushka (Joan Cusack). However, the mission goes horribly wrong and Granny ends up being kidnapped. After receiving word of her grandmother's kidnapping, her granddaughter Red (Hayden Panettiere) leaves her training to help assist in finding her grandmother and the kidnapped children before the evil witch can get her hands on a powerful truffle recipe that can make anyone who eats it unstoppable. What happens from there is one of the most stupid and anger-inducing plots I've seen for quite some time which results in an unbearable experience.
I don't know how something like this could go so horribly wrong. While the first film wasn't flawless in the story, it at least had a clever plot and some sharp dialogue to help keep it afloat. This film however does not. It's not smart or funny at all. Most of the jokes in this movie are some you can see coming from a mile away and are not funny in the slightest. There's this one running gag involving the singing goat from the first film that really made me mad since they kept on repeating it even though it wasn't funny the first time. Also, most of the time the characters just spend their time arguing with each other and it just got so irritating after a while that most of the time I just kept thinking "Stop fighting and move on!" As far as the animation goes, I can say it's a huge improvement over the original though it doesn't say much. The animation is still incredibly dated for 2011 qualities and looks more like a film that came out from 2005. If this was the animation for the first film, it would've worked for the time. It doesn't work now though. Though the one thing that disappointed me most were the characters. I really didn't like them here. Like I said, most of the time is spent on the old characters arguing and fighting with one another while the new ones just quickly got under my skin due to how irritating they were. I was seriously embarrassed for Cusack, Hader, and Poehler. All of them are hilarious and have been in so much better-animated movies, yet I don't know why they were wasted here. The one character that still retains his charm from the first film is Wolf. He still is just as funny and clever as he was in the first film and didn't really lose much of his charm. Then again, Patrick Warburton can make most things funny. Even in the bad stuff he's in, I generally like him. Though the charm of Warburton still couldn't save this movie.
In short, "Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil" is simply awful. The story is unfunny and not as clever, the animation while better than the first film was still dated, and the characters were all unlikeable and not fun at all. It's such a shame to see a movie that was as clever as "Hoodwinked!" get a sequel this bad. If there's anything to come out of this, all I can say is Anne Hathaway really dodged a bullet by not coming back to do this film and doing "Rio" instead. At least that film is fun and charming and has good characters to boot. This film does not. To put lightly, it's a cold case.
