With his background providing lots of music for the latter-day editions of the long-running Dr. Who television series, composer
Murray Gold probably was a good choice to score the animated feature Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil. Director Mike Disa describes his film as "a tongue-in-cheek action comedy," which gives the composer a broad palette to work from.
Gold also must have been aware of all the other music for the film (there is also a "soundtrack" album of the other songs), such as the neo-jump blues material written and performed by Dan Myers and the pop/rock numbers sung by actress
Hayden Panettiere, who voices the movie's lead character, Little Red Riding Hood. So, the composer opted for an eclectic style that, like his Dr. Who work, would respond to whatever the scenes needed without much consideration for stylistic consistency. There are traditional orchestral passages, but
Gold also uses a great deal of 1960s-style jazz-rock in the vein of
Neal Hefti's "Batman Theme" and
Lalo Schifrin's "Mission: Impossible," as if to evoke his primary influences. The music is all over the lot, but that may be only to say that it fits in with the song score and the hellzappopin nature of the movie itself. ~ William Ruhlmann