Hoodwinked Too! Is the Embodiment of a Bad Sequel

know people don't talk about it often but shrek really made the new millennium a different place after its release and that's not a joke by any means the movie about an onion touting scottish ogre voiced by mike myers inspired an entire generation of animated film philosophy unlike anything we'd seen up to that point why exactly from the humor to the main character to the plot to every twist and turn involved the film was just a massive middle finger to everything american animated movie stood for at the time disney don bluve and the like were wholesome and family friendly most of the time shrek was vulgar and filled with adult humor other films were polished and mostly made in 2d shrek was intentionally made to look rough around the edges with a whole new brand of technology for animated filmmaking disney had original love ballads and grand sweeping experiences shrek used pop music and openly made fun of singing out loud everything about it reeked of cynicism and a fed up attitude about the disney renaissance which was just coming to an end around the same time and people fell in love with it shrek and its subsequent sequels were mega hits at the box office and it inspired hundreds of people to start thinking out from the disney vault of polished ideas and into the less sanitary parody angle that dreamworks popularized happily never after surfs up disney got in on it with chicken little and among all those movies was a sleeper hit from an indie studio no one had heard of known as hoodwinked released in 2005. if you looked at it from almost any angle back in the day the movie should have failed it was one of the first cg animated movies to be fully independently funded which meant the studio animating it had way more control of the creative process but it also meant the crew had a much smaller budget to work with production cost said to be under 8 million dollars comparatively speaking that's around 1 20th the budget of shrek 2 which came out only two years before so yeah there had to be a lot of cutbacks for instance they couldn't do rewrites after animation production began because well animation is expensive and redoing a scene would mean going through the whole process of storyboarding framing creating backgrounds etc all over again which they couldn't afford to do for that reason the writers had to make sure the story was as airtight as possible on their first draft since otherwise they'd have no way to go back and change it and i do want to reiterate that that kind of decision is a really bold move if you just took the cut scenes and basic animatics of any disney film in its entirety you could probably make a short film entirely different from what the end product turned out as so not having that much freedom would definitely eat away at you over time the studio animating also had no prior experience so that had to be built from the ground up with a staff that didn't know how to use 3d animation software aside from the troubled production it was distributed by the weinstein company who had a habit of releasing low quality movies no one else would and for a cherry on top the movie was released in january which is generally considered the dumping month for low quality movies that studios know aren't going to do well everything was against it but in the end hoodwink went on to be a relative hit and a cult classic after a long enough time before getting to that though i should tell you about today's sponsor raycon who've been kind enough to give me a pair of their everyday wireless earbuds and honestly i don't know how i got through the day before without them with great audio quality and near instant connection out of the case once i've got them on i barely even notice after a while because they fit so well personally i like having music to listen to when writing reading or playing games and with raycon i can do it both efficiently and affordably since not only do they have free shipping and returns but overall they don't even cost half that of the competition they've also got plenty of options for people who don't like the basic white coming in five different colors man that's such a good deal even dogs could go for it uh actually hold on hey hey hey dogs do you like these earbuds yeah i think that's what they like without ringing endorsement you couldn't go wrong with raycon so go to buy raycon.com just stop in the description and use code holiday to get 15 off thanks again to raycon for sponsoring this video and on with the show to put it basically as a concept it's the idea of if red writing code was examined like a crime drama starting where the fairy tale usually ends and telling the perspective of each character involved as they're interrogated by police giving different insights as to why each character was there in the first place the wolf doesn't just want to eat granny and red for their goodies he's an investigative journalist trying to crack the case of a recipe thief going around the forest granny isn't just a frail old lady she's got a secret double life as an extreme sports fanatic that kind of thing and with such a concept in place it allowed the crew to come up with a really unique way of telling the story through a broken narrative seeing the perspective of different characters as the film goes on not only shows how they each saw the situation providing comedic misunderstandings and unique context to what we'd already seen but also as more and more stories get examined bits of other narratives shown earlier in the movie that didn't make sense on first viewing start adding up much better red is writing a mine card and it suddenly runs out of track for no reason no that was actually the wolf and his squirrel sidekick accidentally starting dynamite and blowing up the path red gets a vision in the clouds of her granny out of nowhere explaining the importance of her hood um actually granny was really there she was just using a parachute after escaping some evil european skiers as you do red meets a singing mountain goat cursed to always belt out what he's saying except in comedic circumstances to be honest there's no subversion there it's just funny so i wanted to mention it and that's really something that the story benefits a lot from the humor and writing of characters when you think about it to be able to pull off such a narrative choice in the first place you need to have a good set of script writers with a vision in mind to make everything pop and thankfully the hoodwink crew knew just what they were doing the best way i can describe how hoodwinked as a film is portrayed would be this hoodwinked is to fairytale stories what invincible is to superhero stories the writers are clearly fans of the original concepts and materials satirized in their work still fully embracing the subgenre they place themselves in while providing commentary that just makes sense in their world but also speaks to subvert the expectations we have as viewers the main leads red the woodsman granny the wolf and boingo the villain are also versions of common tropes around fairy tales but unlike something akin to shrek the creators of hoodwinked wanted to go for a more straightforward approach sure the movie is written with both adults and kids in mind but there isn't really any biting cynicism that something like shrek had the most sarcastic humor come from the wolf in his drypan sort of way but even then there's no intentional biting ridicule at everything being made around the time and that's really what i think made hoodwink stand out among all the films i listed that try to piggyback off shrek's success movies like chicken little are just straight up mean all the time subverting tropes like the supportive father figure or everyone in a fantastical setting not being an [ __ ] in a way that makes you feel like the writers hate whatever it is they're drawing the source material from shrek balanced this out by having a genuine heart and fun characters but most of the films that wanted the same famous shrek lacked that one element so they failed ironically and making an active effort to not be too much like shrek in its execution hoodwinked ended up being more successful than those other movies mentioned at least on a budget to box office ratio the film has sarcastic humor but not every character is cynical or disillusioned they satirize common stereotypes and fairy tales but they don't beat you over the head with the fact that they're different it's mostly composed of rock and pop music but everything is wholly original and there's still room for traditional numbers at a few points whether from a place of parody or sincerity the whole thing just walks that line to a t where you can enjoy yourself as a person who likes fairy tales and as a person who dislikes them because hoodwinked is just so much its own narrative that it almost ceases to become satire drawing most of its humor and character moments from the situation rather than parodying elements the movie is simply wrapped up in itself and embraces what works instead of trying too hard to be a parody or something else entirely making it fun and memorable with a cast that fits perfectly into their roles and remains engaging throughout and yeah the animation is shitty but really who gives a [ __ ] there's a charm in how the crew tried going for a more stop-motion aesthetic instead of what everyone else was doing so even in its worst aspects hoodwinked is brimming with personality and let's be honest it just makes the film funnier as it gets older so with that being said now the small independent studio has an unexpected hit with an ending that suggests a continuation what would be a more logical step than doing a follow-up production issues that's what hoodwink 2 was announced as far back as 2006 right after the original became an unexpected hit but here's the thing the original director didn't want to go through the same process he did for the first film so he and the other main guys responsible for the original would stay on the right as they did before but someone else had to be hired to direct the guy they got had never directed a film before and hadn't watched the original movie when he signed on but you know he did have a lot of experience in the animation world so you know he could probably handle it right after that some more issues came up in casting since anne hathaway the original red got far too big to hire again so they had to get a new va before release there was also a lawsuit because the distributors were taking too long so you could certainly say things went a little bit less smoothly than anticipated the movie did eventually get released in 2011 however so the staff did get that far and oh god people didn't like this no that's an understatement not many people saw this movie especially in comparison to the original but those who did see it hated it and that's reflected in the audience and critic scores on imdb run tomatoes metacritic basically everyone agreed it sucked okay that doesn't happen often but this [ __ ] movie found a way and when i saw it for the first time back when i was 12 i thought the exact same thing even made a review on it probably the first review i ever did for anything so you could say this shitty movie holds a special place in my dumpster hearts which means to pay tribute to the film that got me started towards all of this i'm gonna tell you exactly why it fails and should be disregarded from the hoodwinked canon wouldn't it be funny if i just started playing my old video and that was the whole rest of this behold codewink 2 follows a similar pattern to the first film and then it derives the idea for its plot from crime dramas and action thrillers but unlike the original this instead goes for the much more generic angle of the buddy cop sub-genre and boy does that lack of originality gleam through brightly the entire experience seriously the first thing you notice when booting up hoodwink 2 is just how reliant it actually is on the first film of course all the original protagonists are back this time trying to save hansel and gretel from a witch but hold on there's a distinct lack of excess pandering here remember that singing mountain go that hell bread get to her grandmother's house in the first film uh how about we add him in for no reason other than fan service in an unfunny way too long running gag about him being injured oh remember the woodsman uh remember how ethan filled his dreams by the end of the original and left the group to do his own thing how about we needlessly bring him back too the kids love the funny schnitzel man we gotta bring him back no matter what and boingo he was in the first movie we can't do a sequel without him being needlessly shoehorned in for an ultimately inconsequential scene and why stop at the original movie for references let's go all out with the corporate angle good fellas silence of the lambs twitter facebook food network star wars all of these now exist in the hoodwinked universe you know how the original was pretty self-contained and didn't need to rely on references to other media to be entertaining and instead set itself up based on sincerity sincerity is overrated who needs that when we can completely misinterpret what made the original so worthwhile and jack up the continuity with relationships and ideas that were never present to begin with for real though that's a particular point of annoyance i have with this film's usage of hoodwinks characters it acts like it knows exactly what the original did and tries to branch out using that perception as the basis for the sequel but most of the assumptions made either come from minor character traits or relations that didn't exist at all for example the buddy part of the buddy cop aspect is that it has to do with wolf and red who are teamed up to save granny after she gets kidnapped along with hansel and gretel to make a secret truffle recipe and from the moment the two are teamed up we as the audience are supposed to infer that they were a team before but broke up when red went off to do some other shits at least i think since the movie really gives off mixed signals wolf seems to really misread when she's gone for the original sting at the start with other characters implying they used to be a team but when red gets paired up with him later on she acts as though the two have never worked together and she doesn't want a partner either way the interpretation doesn't make much sense as wolf and red only interacted as adversaries previously and had no moments of teaming up in the original so wolf missing red and or the two of them being a team at one point feels completely out of left field and the way they interact afterwards together doesn't feel the same as before either making red the large and in charge type is fine i guess it kind of matches her original character but where the movie differs is that now she's got an anger problem but at the same time it's only brought up in like two scenes total so the inclusion feels forced for the purpose of giving red a character arc when in reality it's more like a straight line with no focus where they're really messed up in the character department though has to be wolf in the original he was a pretty serious guy who just so happened to also not realize when he looked dumb it was kind of the joke surrounding his character the guy had serious plans for how he wanted to conduct a sting operation and interrogation or search properly but then his squirrel partner twitchy would set off dynamite or he'd get caught up in a situation that made it look like he was going to eat someone's grandma but the disguise to aware will look way stupider than he intended it was always clear that he never wanted anything to go badly [ __ ] just happened that wolf is dead instead what's replaced him is a totally spontaneous wild card with all the mannerisms of a typical loose cannon he tries to order pizza during a sting operation he doesn't follow orders at any point in time he'd rather be doing something else rather than the mission he's on making you wonder why he even wants to be there this is not wolf he's never the one who causes calamity the calamity comes to him and he's certainly not a wild card no matter how much the film tries to push it including outright saying he needs to tone down the wild card aspect because he's just too crazy and you you need to shuffle your wild card antics to the bottom of the deck if anything twitchy was the wild card but he's mostly been put to the sidelines so wolfe can have more bland cop show interactions with red and while i'm mentioning twitchy the film [ __ ] up his character as well twitchy was originally the sidekick and balancing personality to wolf being fast-paced to match wolf's slower sarcastic speech and usually causing half the problems the two got into here he's left with pretty much nothing to do other than make more boring references to the original movie oh wasn't it funny when no one could understood what twitchy was saying so they slowed it down and he sounded like a 20th century gentleman let's do that again in the first few minutes despite the original joke being built up over time rather than basically being used up as soon as he comes on screen and the thing about that is twitchy isn't even speaking fast in the movie they just pitched up his voice to sound like alvin or one of those goddamn chick monks probably theodore that fat [ __ ] apparently the original film's director who voices twitchy gave notes on how his voice was supposed to sound simply speeding up the audio 50 but the crew didn't care and the era was never changed so one of twitchy's most memorable aspects is removed while still acting like it's there the least changed characters from the original are probably the woodsman and granny and funnily enough they're the characters who are also least relevant to the overall movie so you know that's fun you want to know what's worse than all of that though something less appealing than the character butchering and unfunny callbacks and unfunny references everything about the story is just such a massive bore whereas in the original the characters worked in tandem with the story to enhance one another simultaneously every attribute of the story in hoodwink 2 is so incredibly boring and predictable that even if the characters were written the same as before they wouldn't have all that much to work with like i said the film deals with red and wolf trying to find granny who's been kidnapped by an old rival who wants to make a super truffle with infinite power she's also secretly working with hansel and gretel who pretended to be kidnapped to make the plan work really all i can remember about the progression of events in this movie is a bunch of basic uninteresting plot points that don't leave any impact after they're done red was at a food monastery we never heard of before then she and wolf took a guy from a club to get info then they found boingo and they had their second act breakup so they could make up halfway through the third act and the last 20 minutes or so was just a bunch of random action with hansel and gretel supersize the ending way to defeat them also made no sense as the truffles they ate were said to grant great power and speed as well as wisdom but they just became large and when they were tricked into eating more they just turned into balloons because quote the truffles are high in fat which wasn't even brought up as a possibility until it had already happened them going on a rampage and eating all the truffles also didn't make sense with their previous motivations which were to make the truffles and then get rich selling them to villains what even is logic do i sound bored explaining all this because it's boring in like every cop movie ever but with some fairy tale elements put in doesn't help that they basically had the exact same twist as the first movie where the seemingly innocent characters are actually evil and scheming come on you could have at least been a little bit more original with that since they're referencing what came before them so much would it have been so much to ask that they imitate the format in a creative way like here's an obvious suggestion have the team go on a mission together where they fail but only the failure is shown at the start then the team has time after where they each discuss how their side of the plan went and what tripped them up potentially giving a different reveal than just someone we thought was good was evil hell it's not much but there's still more that could have been done with that than what we got did the original writers really put this garbage together let me do some research oh that explains it corporate meddling according to multiple sources involved with the movie including the original writers and patrick warburton the voice of wolf heavy edits were made to the script basically destroying the original vision and making the overall product appeal to a much younger audience than what they were originally going for i guess with a larger budget more restraints were in order one of the only problems the original movie didn't have not that the bigger budget helped this movie much considering hoodwink 2 looks way more soulless than the original but nonetheless you know it is a real shame that the creators got screwed over in such a way by executives that didn't have a clue why the original worked leaving us with just another flop no one's gonna want to remember i wish there was something more positive to say because i know there were talented people involved with the project but in the end it got what it deserved and flubbed at the box office with nobody caring there was just no hook to actually make it worthwhile so people didn't waste their time on it with that in mind i hope you didn't feel the same watching this video talking more about it and the much better original or maybe you did and this video got you to hate me either way let me know and i'll be sure to catch you all next time thanks again for watching and i'll see you all later [Music] um [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Just Stop

Views: 371,538

Keywords: Hoodwinked!, Hoodwinked Too!, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs Evil, Hoodwinked too review, Hoodwinked too rant, Hoodwinked 2 rant, Hoodwinked 2 review, Just Stop rant, Just Stop review, Hoodwinked Review, Shrek, Shrek 2, Chicken Little

Id: bJXjnJqWOSc

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021