Hoodwinked!

Despite low-budget animation, the newest feature by the Weinstein Company, "Hoodwinked," is saved by some silly animal and human characters, as well as great writing and hilarious jokes.

Basically, it's the story of Little Red Riding Hood as told from the vantage point of Red (voice of Ann Hathaway), the Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton), Granny (Glenn Close) and a dimwitted, axe-wielding woodsman (Jim Belushi).

The four are arrested, accused of stealing goodie recipes and interrogated by a long-legged frog, Inspector Flippers (David Ogden Stiers). Each suspect tells a different story that somehow cleverly ties the whole event together. In other words, it's like a version of Kurosawa's "Rashomon" as produced by computer animators who could not get work at Pixar, Disney or Dreamworks.

Seeing the studio's press release, I noticed the poor computer work and thought this would be another "Valiant," but the crisp dialogue and truly funny situations made me laugh almost all the way through this film, which is director Cory Edwards' feature debut.

It's also a much more entertaining picture than "Chicken Little" or "Shark Tale" could ever hope to be. And while the puns are pretty much aimed at adults, the kids will enjoy the many animal characters, such as pigs as policemen (get it?!), a singing, hillbilly goat (Benjy Gaither), a squirrel on speed (director Edwards), a Huggy bear-type stool pigeon sheep (Chazz Palimeri) and a tricky little bunny, Boingo (Andy Dick).

This film runs 85 minutes and opens for wide release on Friday, Jan. 13.