The film opens with narration that refers to Little Red Riding Hood, but could also be a plea for leniency from the filmmakers: “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

Unfortunately, that is a lot to overlook. The action scenes, while frenetically paced, just don’t pan out. It is difficult to feel danger in a manic chase when the character is staring straight ahead, mouth agape, with the same blank expression from the scene before. Most of the emotion, then, comes from the actors that are voicing Red (Anne Hathaway), her Granny, the Wolf, and the Woodsman (Jim Belushi). It is like watching a bad music video where the singer is belting out the song, but can’t lip-sync it with the same passion.

To its credit, “Hoodwinked” attempts to mix things up by sporting a “Rashomon”-like timeline where each character gives their own version of a crime. In this case, the fairy tale quartet are rounded up by a long- legged, mustachioed frog named Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Steirs) for questioning about the theft of the woodland communities’ “goodie” recipes.

Each suspect has a stranger backstory than the next, some so weird that the jokes may be lost on younger viewers. As the Wolf trudges through a sewer with his annoying chipmunk sidekick Twitchy (Cory Edwards), the scared rodent says, “We’re gonna die in here!”

“That’s what they said at the Alamo,” the Wolf reassures him.

This kind of cheekiness is kind of charming after a while, and there are other clever ideas, like a goat (Benjy Gaither) who uses his oversized horns as a rocking chair and has to sing everything in a high country tenor. The original songs, sung by the characters (with the notable exception of a nice ballad called “Red is Blue” by Ben Folds), are not too bad either.

“Hoodwinked” shows a lot of promise for its filmmaking team. It has an anarchic spirit and lots of in-jokes for adults. With a bigger budget and a better concept, Leech and the Edwards brothers could probably make a way more entertaining film.