HOODWINKED BY BROOKE HOLGERSON

81 MINUTES | [FLAGSHIP + PROVIDENCE PLACE 16 + SHOWCASE]

In stretching Little Red Riding Hood into a (short) feature-length film, writers/directors Cory and Todd Edwards have created a mystery that retains little of the original’s elemental appeal. Instead of visiting her sick granny, Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway) is now a delivery girl for her grandmother’s baked-goods empire. Someone is stealing recipes from the bakeries in the forest, and the usual suspects (wolf, woodsman, granny) are implicated in the crime, which unfolds, Rashomon style, in multiple flashbacks as the characters are questioned by a Sherlock Holmes–like detective. It’s the Shrek approach to fairy tales, where an irreverent updating of the source material gives old stories new life, but here the cashing in on a proven formula is so transparent, and the animation so unimaginative, that there’s no joy in the telling.