Red Riding Hood

Folklore, Myths and Fairy-tales are all rooted in reality. They have grown out of our collective fears, insecurities and sub-conscience. Yet in Catherine Hardwicke’s take on Red Riding Hood, the film is so disconnected from any real place or time that it has all the depth of a fashion magazine photo spread. Amanda Seyfried is beautiful to look at with her pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair set against a velvety red cape and hood, but you can’t build an entire movie around around a woman’s beauty, there needs to be something more.

The thing that bothered me the most about this film was the contemporary behaviors set in a medieval time. It is never clear where we are and what the time period is because there is such an eclectic mix of styles and crafts, but it is an unenlightened time and with such a small close-knit community, they probably would not have allowed Valerie (Red Riding Hood) to act so wayward and independent.

When I looked up to see what else Catherine Hardwicke has directed I wasn’t surprised at all to see that she was an production designer first and had directed the teen sensation film Twilight. Although I’ve never seen any the Twilight films you can’t escape the parodies and pop culture references, and its stamp is all over this film. Like Twilight, Valerie must decide between two men, Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) her childhood love or Henry (Max Irons) the man she has been promised to. But since either one of them may be the village werewolf, she is taking the stance of wait and see.

The film does have a little mystery going since we didn’t know if the wolf is a man or a woman. It looked very masculine to me, but when Gary Oldman shows up as a werewolf hunting priest he admits that his own wife was a werewolf which put everyone, including the women under suspicion.

Although beautiful to look at, I became quickly bored with this movie and when the girls started dancing like teenage seductresses it completely took me out of the film. There needed to be more darkness, more angst and more suspicion. I found the werewolf out of sync with the look of the film and as far as tension I found film’s like The Crucible far more scary. If you are not a 14 year old girl this film really misses its mark. Maybe the next fairy tale inspired film will do better.

Rating: Rent It This film has all the depth of a fashion magazine photo spread