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Some of the not-so-positive reviews of Hoodwinked focused on the animation quality and said it's not at Pixar's level. How do you respond to that?

Edwards: The critics were hard to take at first. We knew the animation was not good, and we knew it was not Pixar. Going into it, Todd said, "Let's not try to do 'diet Pixar'. Let's not try to do something technically grand, and fail at it. Let's do something very specific and small." So we picked a look. I've always loved the look of stop-motion animation back in the days of Rankin-Bass holiday specials, like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and The Little Drummer Boy, so we made a very specific choice to make the film look like that, because we knew the animation was going to be a little herky-jerky. We were going to pick a style that would merit the resources that we had. And I think we were very successful at that.

But I'll be real honest, there are many, many shots that I wince at when I see them, because it's not my standard of excellence. I know they could be better, but there comes a time at the end of the day where we just have to give up on some things. So to hear critics ranting about it, we want to yell back, "We know it's bad! But this is what we could do!" And the fact that the film is successful in spite of that is really cool, because it basically says to the industry, "Look at what the story and the charming characters did; they were able to surpass the bad animation and the technical problems."

All through production, I gave our crew a speech I like to call "Kermit the Frog vs. Howard the Duck." If you remember the painfully horrible Howard the Duck, it had one of the most realistic animatronic characters ever put on the screen at that time, and the movie failed; and then you've got Kermit the Frog, where you can literally see the strings and the wires and the stitches on his head—he is the fakiest-looking frog you've ever seen, clearly a puppet with ping-pong-ball eyes—and yet he is one of the most beloved characters in TV and movies. Why is that? It's not because he is the most technically innovative character. It is because he is a charming character. He's funny, he's well-written, he's endearing. And so that is what I focused on in Hoodwinked. And to see the film do so well is a great testament to that, I guess. I feel very vindicated.

© Peter T. Chattaway 2006, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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