he story begins the same way we're used to hearing it. Little Red Riding Hood (Hathaway) sets out for a peaceful skip through the woods but encounters a menacing Big Bad Wolf (Warburton). When she finally arrives at her destination, Grandma (Close) turns out to be the wolf in disguise. Violence seems imminent until a Woodsman (Belushi) bursts in, saving the day.
Red looks innocent, Grandma looks helpless, The Wolf looks guilty, and the Woodsman looks heroic. But then the police arrive, led by gentlefrog detective Mr. Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers), a parody of Dashiell Hammett's sleuth Nick Charles (of The Thin Man), a character well before the time of not only the children in the audience, but also most of their parents and some of their grandparents. Flippers won't name a culprit until everybody testifies.
And so we get to see how the day's events looked to the Wolf (actually an investigative reporter on the trail of a criminal conspiracy), the Woodsman (actually a dufus wannabe actor, getting into character for his role in a TV commercial) and Grandma (actually a thrill-seeking extreme sportster, complete with "GGG" tattooed on the back of her neck).
Not surprisingly, the true villain isn't any of them. His identity should be obvious to all but the slowest kids in the audience.
Subpar Shrek sputters and stalls
There's no getting around it: Some of this is awfully funny. There are scattered peaks of outright hilarity, chief among them an encounter with a mountain goat who can't stop singing, no matter how politely or frequently he's asked. His singing is funny enough by itself, but the character also has multiple sets of detachable horns, each specially customized for different household applications, and the set that doubles as a common piece of porch furniture is such a brilliant sight gag that it almost justifies the price of admission.
There are other moments as good, including a couple of good parody songs, but too many of the intended big-laugh moments are merely labored and hackneyed. For instance, the common device of the threatened cartoon character who suddenly demonstrates advanced martial artistry, a la The Matrix, was old if effective by the time it appeared in Shrek; it's been used so many times since then that we might have been more gratified if this Little Red Riding Hood had demonstrated dangerous capabilities of an entirely different kind. The snowboarding hot mama of a Granny is also an old idea, not nearly as startling as the moviemakers intend her to be. The idiot Woodsman has some stuff (especially in one scene where he holds an ax by the blade and tries to cut down a tree with its handle), but is also not much to write home about: He's just stupid, and undiluted by any memorable personality.
The budget CGI animation is pretty enough. It would have been a startling leap forward only a few short years ago, but has its jerky moments, and—most importantly—doesn't ever succeed in investing any of these characters with the illusion of life. Granny, the Wolf and the Woodsman all sport woefully inexpressive facial designs, and as a result very little compelling personality.
