Movies Reviews

Red Riding Hood – Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Mar 11, 2011, 14:52 GMT

Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding ...more

A feature film based on a very brief fairy tale is a difficult undertaking right off the bat. Somehow, 90 minutes must be filled as opposed to the six minutes it takes to read the fable, doing all the voices and actions.  

It’s a risky, go for broke prospect that requires using any and all means necessary to fill in the blanks and create blanks to fill in. 

Stretching is what ultimately happens, stretch, stretch, and stretch some more. It’s not an enviable state of affairs for any filmmaker, but Catherine Hardwicke and the folks at Appian Way have attempted to do so.  The result is a dark and morbid retelling of the Red Riding Hood story fleshed out with post-modern psychology and spin.

It’s not Hardwicke’s fault – it is an impossibility to create out of whole cloth a compelling, engaging and sensible filler to meet the standard feature film length and have it make be appropriate. 

So one adds contemporary flourishes, music, behaviors, catch phrases, attitudes, add some psychological and sociological jibber jabber- Why is everyone looking at me?  Who is the werewolf?  -  was your childhood happy? and mixes it with every … possible…thing…in…the…wide….world… to have it add up to a solid two hours.

However, the beauty, purpose and meaning of fairy tales is subliminal and primordial, and complete within the brief traditional structure of fairy tales.  We experience a world of occurrences, memories, the rise of emotions and deep responses to what is basically an exceedingly clever logline or synopsis. 

To embellish and add destroys it.  Like adding figures behind the Mona Lisa because you think she’ll look more interesting with a crowd.

A story is somewhere inside there, but it is clogged with trumped up tales and manufactured events, most of which are out of place, for instance, Gary Oldman as a cleric who rolls into town in a big nasty war machine with bodyguards. How Iraq!  How non-Red Riding Hood.  It doesn’t make the film more interesting, instead it adds to the film’s artistic confusion.

Amanda Seyfried is Valerie, who is given a red riding hood by her grandmother (Julie Christie) as she approaches her engagement to a man she doesn’t want.   The hood, a wedding garment, stands out in the brindle 16th century village and telegraphs all kinds of things will happen.  It’s a passionate color.  It suggests Valerie is on an unfortunate life path strewn with blood.  It’s a good strong symbol and one of my favorite conceits of the film.  But that’s in the original.

And it also symbolizes sexual passion.  Valerie is involved with two men, engaged to one against her will and in a sexual relationship with the other, who will do anything to keep her but loves her enough to let her go. Much of their angst concerns the ridiculous adults around them.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

What it is, is Twilight.  Two calendar worthy hunks vying for the most beautiful maid in the village, whose passion plays take place in the woods, and who are threatened by supernatural wolves and who are anxious and suspicious and teenager-ish. The fairy tale plot we know and love is dwarfed for this modern, self-conscious twaddle that has its feet firmly planted in Hardwicke’s twilight vision.

Oh and the  signature lines "What big hands you have, "My, what big teeth you have!", to which the wolf replies, "The better to eat you with," occur a little late in the day and by the time they roll around, after all the stretching, they provoke chuckles not dramatic familiarity.

Red Riding Hood reaches out to young filmgoers and will have no problem making money hand over fist.  The Twi-hards will appreciate and recognize it as one of theirs, but then again, they may have had enough, and they may like Seyfried and they may have fond memories of the fairy tale, but in the end none of it matters.

It’s not a great films and sometimes, as in life, brevity is best.  No Red Riding Hood film has ever done much business.  It’s that old stretch routine what does it in.

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35mm fantasy
Written by David Johnson
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Opens March 11
Runtime: 100 minutes
MPAA:Rated PG-13 for violence and creature terror, and some sensuality
Country:  US / Canada
Language: English