Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs Evil (PG)
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This is the sequel to the 2005 film Hoodwinked! It came out in 2011, but I didn't see it until 2017. While the first movie certainly wasn't among the most critically successful CGI films, the sequel was far more poorly received. Which I don't understand at all. I do need to say that often when I watch a sequel to a movie, and look at my review (and particularly my rating) of the earlier movie, I may find myself surprised by what I thought of it, compared to what I think of the newer movie. Like, I may assume I probably liked the first movie more than the sequel, especially if the critics did. But I may also find myself wanting to give the sequel a rating that turns out to be higher than the one I gave the original, which is the case here. And that makes me want to rewatch the original, thinking I might give it a higher rating than I did when I first watched it. And, well... maybe that'll happen, someday. But I don't plan on rewatching the original anytime soon, so for now I'm just going to assume I actually did like this movie more than I did the first one. But at least I want to make it clear I could be wrong about that. Of course, I could also be right, in which case, screw the critics. This was a good movie. Sure, the first one had a... well, let's say a somewhat more artistic concept. But I found this movie at least as amusing and probably cooler than the first one.

Anyway, sometime after the events of the first movie, Nicky Flippers went from being a detective to the head of a sort of spy agency called the HEA (Happily Ever After agency). His agents include various characters from the first movie, including Abigail 'Granny' Puckett, and Red Puckett (now voiced by Hayden Panettiere), and Wolf, and Twitchy. (All of them except Red have the same voice actors as the first film.) At the start of the movie, Red is away, training with a martial arts group called the Sisters of the Hood (or just the Sisterhood), with whom Granny trained long ago. Currently, Granny is leading an HEA team responding to an anonymous tip about a couple of kidnapped kids being held captive by a witch (who is voiced by Joan Cusack). The kids are Hansel (Bill Hader) and Gretel (Amy Poehler, but I swear the whole time she sounded to me like Grey DeLisle). The mission to rescue the kids gets botched by Wolf and Twitchy doing things their own way, and Granny ends up getting abducted by the witch, herself.

Meanwhile, Red is having trouble with her secret training. I mean, she's highly skilled, but she is also highly susceptible to taunting about her not living up to Granny's legacy. In spite of her training being incomplete, when she learns that Granny has been kidnapped, she goes to try and find her (and the kids, of course). But her partnership with Wolf is strained, because each of them are dealing with their own issues. Red feels like she won't be good enough if she can't do things on her own, and Wolf feels rejected because of this. So that becomes an ongoing subplot of the movie. Anyway, it turns out that kidnapping Hansel and Gretel was really part of a larger plot to lure out Granny, to kidnap her. Because the Sisterhood has a secret recipe for a kind of "super truffle" that would make anyone who eats it invincible. The witch had stolen the recipe, but the final ingredient is never written down or even spoken, so she wants Granny to reveal it and make a batch of the truffles for her.

Well, there are various other things going on, throughout the movie. At one point, Wolf's trailer gets blown up by the three little pigs, who had a grudge against him. (They're voiced by Cheech and Chong and apparently Phil LaMarr, though I only ever noticed Cheech and Chong speaking.) And at one point in Red and Wolf and Twitchy's search for Granny, they contacted a singing harp (voiced by Wayne Newton), who worked in a nightclub run by a giant (voiced by Brad Garrett). At another point, they get help from Kirk the Woodsman. (I think other than Red, he's the only one whose voice actor changed from the first film; this time, he's voiced by Martin Short). But Kirk isn't part of the HEA. He's got a successful yodeling career going now, and he has a group of other yodelers backing him up, who all also end up helping Red and the others. One of them is named Heidi, and she's voiced by Heidi Klum, which I might not even mention except that the DVD had sort of interviews with some of the movie's voice actors as bonus features, and Klum was one of them.

Anyway... I don't want to give away any more details of the plot, though I will say there was a point towards the end of the movie where I really wished the giant would show up and help out, because it would have been ironic and I think it would have been funny. But it didn't happen. Nevertheless, I liked how everything worked out, with the case as well as with Red's partnership with Wolf. And stuff. And... certainly I wouldn't say it was a great movie, but it was good. There were lots of bits that I found really amusing. And... well, there were some catchy pop songs (for which there are music videos as bonus features on the DVD; one of them is by Panettiere). And I dunno what else to tell you.