Justin Chang wrote that the character "steals the show every minute he's onscreen." One of the main criticisms of the film was the poor quality of its animation. Berardinelli called it some of the worst CGI animation in memory. He felt that the characters looked plastic, considered the backgrounds dull, and wrote, "On more than one occasion, I thought I was watching something made for TV. When compared to today's visual standards for animated films, Hoodwinked is far below the curve." Burr considered the film's surfaces poorly rendered and compared them to "Teletubbieland reupholstered with Naugahyde." Westbrook felt that the animation worked well for the animal characters, but wrote, "the humans have a glassy sheen and brittle hardness, much like work done in the early days of CG ... That art has come too far to embrace a throwback like Hoodwinked as lovably quaint. It's simply dated." Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post compared the characters to rubber toys, and wrote, "their faces are without nuance or vividness ... In movement, especially, do they lack grace and conviction. It seems like the recent breakthroughs in computerized magic have bypassed the poor Edwards fellows, as it looks stuck somewhere in the 1970s, or maybe even earlier." Many reviews negatively compared the film to the Shrek series. Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail considered the film to be "a sort of discount Shrek", while Burr called it "Shrek with added drek." Westbrook wrote that "Echoing such a popular predecessor as Shrek is not a good thing—especially when the echo is so faint." Berardinelli felt that the fairy tale references were not as smartly done as in the first Shrek film, while Bernard felt that Hoodwinked! took fairy tale revisionism too far. He felt that the humor in Shrek worked due to the fairy tale characters remaining in character throughout the film, and wrote, "It's pointless to scold them for behaving the way fairy tales intended, and that's far funnier than turning them into breakdancing anachronisms." Bill Muller of The Arizona Republic considered Red's kung fu abilities to be overly similar to Princess Fiona's "Matrix agility." Gleiberman also noted the similarities between the film and Shrek, but he was positive in the comparison, feeling that its independent production gave the filmmakers "the freedom to follow their flakiest corkscrew whims." While Wilmington did not find Hoodwinked! as impressive or beguiling as Shrek, he