REVIEWED -  HOODWINKED! THE Little Red Riding Hood tale gets a contemporary treatment in this CGI-animated musical feature, which borrows the structure of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon to create a whodunit observed from multiple perspectives. And there has not been a more revisionist version of the story since Neil Jordan collaborated with novelist Angela Carter for The Company of Wolves in 1984.

Unfortunately, Hoodwinked! fails to be even remotely as interesting as that description suggests. It begins at the climax, when Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway) encounters the Wolf (Patrick Warburton), who is most implausibly disguised as her Gran (Glenn Close). As a police officer (a frog voiced by David Ogden Stiers) arrives on the scene, a series of extended flashbacks outline the preceding events.

The shadow of Shrek hangs heavily over this knowing treatment of the familiar story. Red is a spunky heroine adept at karate moves. Gran is an extreme sports enthusiast. The Wolf is an investigative journalist working with a squirrel photographer to track down the Goody Bandit, who is stealing Gran's recipes. And the Woodsman (Jim Belushi, gratingly impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a struggling actor turned lumberjack.

The animation is bland, the humour hopelessly strained, the attempts at hard-boiled noirish dialogue embarrassing, the puns cringe-inducing, and the songs awful. Maybe, just maybe, undemanding children might enjoy Hoodwinked!. Accompanying adults are more likely to squirm through its inanity.