Red Riding Hood Reviews
Tries to be too many things all at once
Posted : 1 year, 8 months ago on 4 August 2022 01:41I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get much. Red Riding Hood(not the fairytale by the way) does try hard to be a lot of things, including introducing a number of horror, fantasy and mystery elements. But due to the sluggish pace and disjointed story structure(that is full of overlong filler, particularly the celebration scene, and the dream sequence was very awkwardly placed) the film fails at pretty much all these elements.
The script is very clunky, underdeveloped and banal as well. A lot of it did not keep my attention and I found myself chuckling into my coke at any unintentionally funny bits. The CGI is quite poor here, with the wolf looking as though it was done in a hurry. Hardwicke's direction never rises above mediocre, the editing is unfocused and frenzied and the three titular characters are incredibly dull and uninteresting with the romantic elements between them poorly written and directed.
The acting doesn't fare much better. Amanda Seyfried is pretty but bland in the title role and shows little or no chemistry with her co-stars, while Max Irons(son of Jeremy), Lukas Haas and Shiloh Fernandez show good looks but awkward line delivery. Virginia Madsen and Billy Burke are both wasted, both over-doing it in a valiant attempt to elevate their weak material(these two actors probably had the worst of the dialogue next to the leads actually). And the climax is little more than a mangled mess and devoid of depth.
Despite these many cons, there are some decent assets. The score is atmospheric enough and the costume and set design are spot on. Plus there are two good performances, Gary Oldman and Julie Christie. Oldman does chew the scenery, but he looks as though he's having a ball, while Christie is very enchanting.
Overall, not terrible, but deeply flawed and over-ambitious. 4/10 Bethany Cox
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An average movie
Posted : 5 years, 10 months ago on 3 June 2018 05:180 comments, Reply to this entry
Red Riding Hood review
Posted : 12 years, 4 months ago on 12 December 2011 12:470 comments, Reply to this entry
Red Riding Hood review
Posted : 12 years, 5 months ago on 3 November 2011 03:25And the real shame of it is, I paid to see this in theatre, and it really, really, wasn't worth that price tag. I thought I might try and give it a second chance, but...I haven't been able to bring myself to suffer through it a second time.
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Red Riding Hood review
Posted : 12 years, 7 months ago on 23 September 2011 01:200 comments, Reply to this entry
Red Riding Hood review
Posted : 12 years, 8 months ago on 31 August 2011 12:230 comments, Reply to this entry
All the more to bore us with, filmmakers?
Posted : 12 years, 10 months ago on 28 June 2011 05:32
Evidently, the success of the Twilight saga is having adverse effects on contemporary filmmaking sensibilities; perpetuating the stereotype that female audiences who enjoy romantic fantasy fiction do not deserve good genre material. After all, if the girls merrily consume Stephanie Meyer's insufferable bullshit, why bother putting in the extra effort to make something better? Red Riding Hood represents a blatant attempt to cash in on the amazingly profitable Twilight series, with the powers that be doing everything possible to recreate the phenomenon. Catherine Hardwicke (who directed the original Twilight picture) was even hired to oversee Red Riding Hood, which contains several Twilight-esque elements: sweeping vistas, moody cinematography, digitally-created werewolves, a Twilight cast member (Billy Burke), and a story of a girl torn between two young studs who cannot act. Yet, with howlingly bad writing (har har), Red Riding Hood fails as a horror, a whimsical folk tale, and as a romance. It does, however, work on occasion as an unintentional, campy comedy.
Set in the isolated village of Daggerhorn which lies in the midst of a dense wilderness, Valerie (Seyfried) pines for local woodcutter Peter (Fernandez) but is conflicted by her arranged marriage to the wealthy Henry (Irons). Daggerhorn has been previously subjected to werewolf attacks, but animal sacrifice has maintained peace for twenty years. With Valerie on the verge of running away with Peter, tragedy strikes when the wolf kills Valerie's sister and breaks the peace. Fearing for the village's safety, the local priest turns to master hunter Father Solomon (Oldman) and his team of warriors to kill the menace. Soon after his arrival, Solomon lets the worried townsfolk know that the culprit may be one of them in disguise...
Red Riding Hood is a reimagining of the well-known folktale in the very loosest sense of the word. Strip away the title, the red cloak and a ridiculous dream sequence paying homage to the famous text ("Oh grandmother, what big teeth you have!"), and all that remains is a generic story about a generic village under a generic siege by a generic werewolf. Rather than anything approaching a Brothers Grimm fairytale, the film is more like Sleepy Hollow meets Agatha Christie with The Wolfman undertones and Twilight overtones.
Red Riding Hood is a dangerously slow movie, yet one cannot call the film deliberately-paced since that would suggest the sluggish momentum was intentional in order to generate tension and draw viewers into the story. Instead, this is just a cumbersome piece of filmmaking with zero thrills and a love triangle with all the heat of wintertime Antarctica. And for crying out loud, the love triangle serves no purpose outside of making it seem similar to Twilight. (All the more to bore us with, filmmakers?) There are no shocks to experience here, nor is there any no horror to scare us with, worthwhile romance to swoon over, or forward momentum to keep us engaged. Chances are you'll fall asleep not long into the movie. And then when the horribly animated CGI wolf jumps out to growl at the camera, you'll wake up just to laugh at how ridiculous it all is. The film's concluding five minutes, meanwhile, are fucked up beyond anything that could be remotely construed as rational thought, and are unintentionally hilarious.
Every bone in Red Riding Hood's cinematic construction is adorned with the same characteristics seen in Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight film - it has a sleek sheen and a moody atmosphere that flirts with a dangerous edge, but the efforts are ultimately wasted on the soap opera-level storytelling. To be fair, this is at times a visually stunning film, and Hardwicke occasionally establishes a genuinely enthralling, accomplished atmosphere. Yet, too often the film descends into pure campiness. In particular, the wolf scenes make the film's PG-13 rating amazingly obvious, bringing about an absence of genuine terror. Whenever the wolf is on-screen, it looks like precisely what it is: a digital creation. Filmmakers need to learn that practical effects and make-up generate a far more impressive and effective filmic representation of a werewolf. Even 2010's subpar remake of The Wolfman succeeded on a visceral level because it had the freedom to be R-rated, and the werewolf was a practical creation.
Amanda Seyfried can impress when given the right material, but Red Riding Hood does her career no favours, with the script calling upon her to alternate between looking pensive and gazing into space. The rest of the performances, meanwhile, emanate absurdly forced sincerity and intensity. As Valerie's two love interests, Max Irons and Shiloh Fernandez are nothing more than catalogue models pretending to be actors - they are admittedly handsome, but have zero presence and display no evidence of acting talent at all. Veteran actor Gary Oldman was also called upon to provide the material with some gravitas, but instead submitted an absurdly over-the-top, hammy performance destined to provoke unintentional laughs. It was an easy character for the star to pull off, and he sunk his teeth into it, causing a huge ruckus while the rest of the disinterested cast stand around waiting for terror to strike or for something challenging to react to. Unfortunately, Oldman's character begins as someone interesting before the screenplay senselessly turns his Father Solomon role into a cookie-cutter villain we're meant to hate. Zuh? Also present here is Julie Christie whose portrayal of Valerie's granny lacks warmth, while Billy Burke is laughably hammy as Valerie's father and Virginia Madsen is strong but underused as Valerie's mother.
If the team behind Red Riding Hood merged a more convincing romance with genuine thrills and terror, it might have been worth revisiting the oft-told fairytale. As it is, the resultant film is a mess of scare-free horror, laughable romance, and animated mannequins trying to act. Not to mention, with a PG-13 rating rather than an R, a town dance number and a few bloodless off-screen maulings are about as graphic as the film gets. At least the campiness permits you to laugh at it from time to time, though.
4.4/10
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Red Riding Hood review
Posted : 12 years, 10 months ago on 27 June 2011 06:190 comments, Reply to this entry
Red Riding Hood review
Posted : 12 years, 12 months ago on 1 May 2011 02:400 comments, Reply to this entry