‘Hoodwinked’ fails to capture reader with multiple fairy tale reinventions

In theaters

HOODWINKED, directed by Cory Edwards, written by Edwards, Todd Edwards and Tony Leach, 81 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new computer-animated movie “Hookwinked” is a riff on the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale, re-imagining our innocent, skipping little sweetheart as a street-smart, butt-kicking, take-no-prisoners hard-lass from the ‘hood.

The film, which director Cory Edwards based on a script he co-wrote with Todd Edwards and Tony Leach, begins on a high note but doesn’t sustain it, with Red Riding Hood (voice of Anne Hathaway) stopping by her grandmother’s house to find in Granny’s bed a wolf (Patrick Warburton) cross-dressed as Granny herself.

Thing is, this Red isn’t so easily fooled and she’s certainly no pushover. She’s still a child, yes, but she’s a child of pop culture and 40-plus years of feminism, with her calculating eyes seeing plenty and an eagerness to protect herself taking hold the moment the opportunity presents itself. This is, after all, a Red Riding Hood not afraid to use a can of Mace.

To wit: After noting the Wolf’s big hands, his bad breath and his big ears (“All the better to hear your many criticisms with, my dear”), soon his mask is off, his fangs are bared, and Red is ready to rumble. Before she can, however, in through the window comes the Woodsman (Jim Belushi), who starts swinging an ax and shrieking just as Red’s real Granny (Glenn Close) leaps out of a closet, mysteriously bound and gagged but nevertheless ready to fight.

What’s going on here? Initially, a few laughs, but when the movie reveals itself to be an old-school police procedural that relies on an endless string of flashbacks to help assemble the truth of how we came to this point, it falls apart.

With its pileup of twists, stretches in logic and broad winks at the audience only serving to complicate an already dense plot, the movie gets stuck. It doesn’t help that it courts comparisons to the superior “Shrek,” which boasted better animation and successfully toyed with fairy tale conventions in ways that “Hoodwinked” fails to match.

It’s tough to nail a movie that wants to please as much as “Hoodwinked” does. It also would be unfair to overlook the fact that some of the jokes are indeed clever. The problem is that in trying so hard to have a good time, Edwards and company didn’t know when to quit. They have created overkill, not comedy, with momentum lost amid the chaos.

Grade: C

On video and DVD

FLIGHTPLAN, directed by Robert Schwentke, written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray, 93 minutes, rated PG-13.

In “Flightplan,” 6-year-old Julia Pratt (Marlene Lawston) goes missing at 37,000 feet on a transatlantic flight from Berlin to New York. Was it the hasenpfeffer and the currywurst that did her in? Unfortunately for Julia, things look more insidious than that.

For her mother, Kyle (Jodie Foster), a propulsion engineer, the problem facing her is a sketchy flight crew that has no record of Julia boarding the plane and no eyewitness to prove that she even exists. Instead, all they have is Kyle’s word, which is becoming increasingly shaky as Kyle’s fears escalate into the sort of rage that suggests instability.

Worse for Kyle is that the crew learns she recently lost her husband to suicide – he tossed himself off a rooftop and now is in a casket in the belly of the plane. In the sidelong glances that follow that little bombshell, it’s clear that everyone here believes they’re dealing with a woman whose grief might have got the best of her.

This becomes especially true when another revelation comes from the authorities, who are called upon when Kyle starts racing up and down the aisles, accusing the Arab passengers of kidnap and murder, and demanding that “every inch” of the plane be searched for her daughter. What that revelation is won’t be revealed here, but it helps to spin the web that creates the noose through which Kyle finds her neck.

To the crew and to the U.S. marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) charged to watch her, there’s every indication that recent events have left Kyle unhinged, which will do her no favors in her efforts to get her daughter back. After all, for reasons she can’t understand, she knows that somebody here is lying to her.

Directed by Robert Schwentke from a script by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray, “Flightplan” is well-acted, well-assembled product for the masses. Its main problem is timing. The movie pales in the wake of Wes Craven’s lean, focused “Red Eye,” which is taut and kinetic in ways that “Flightplan” isn’t. The other problem is that there is a rather large elephant in the room, which we’ll call redundancy.

The movie comes too close to “Panic Room,” a better thriller that also featured Foster as a single mother trying to protect her daughter, and it borrows too liberally from Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes,” in which a woman goes missing from a train. If it weren’t for Foster’s ferocious performance in “Flightplan,” there’s every indication that audiences might have found themselves on a caboose.

Grade: B-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.