Red Riding Hood

Of the classics of world literature that is demanding to be made as an erotic fantasy for teenage girls, “Red Riding Hood,” released in 2011, is way down the list. Roger Ebert even said in his review, “Here's a movie that cross-pollinates the "Twilight" formula with a werewolf and adds a girl who always wears a red hooded cape, although I don't recall her doing any riding.” It’s easy to think up of a story conference where they said, “Let’s switch the vampire with a werewolf and repeat the theme of a virgin falls in love with a handsome but dangerous man, only let’s get two men!”

What this inspiration flunks to convince is that while a young woman might play with the concept of a vampire boyfriend, she might not want to fall in love with a wolf. Although she might have thought that it would be nice to live in the woods in Oregon, she might not want to live in the Black Forest hundreds of years ago because you’re not able to get any cellphone reception there.

“Red Riding Hood” has put in the trouble of being painfully serious about a plot so ridiculous, it demands to be filmed by Monty Python. Ebert said in his review, “All that amused me was a dream sequence where Grandma says, “The better to eat you with.” I'm asking myself, “How can Red Riding Hood dream about dialogue in her own fairy tale when she hasn't even gone over the hill and through the dale to grandmother's house yet?””

The movie was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who made the first “Twilight” movie. “Red Riding Hood” starts off with computer-generated shots hundreds of square miles of forests, surrounded here and there by grim, stubby castles. Then we meet the narrator, Valerie, played by Megan Charpentier, who always wears a red cape. She is a young woman when she runs away with Peter, played by DJ Greenburg, her adolescent boyfriend, so they capture a bunny rabbit and possibly cut its throat, although the camera moves away from the bunny at the critical moment to focus on their faces as the young actors think, “OK, this is where they jump ahead to the future, and we are replaced by Amanda Seyfried and Shiloh Fernandez.”

They live in a village that is one of the strangest non-places in history of production design. Ebert said in his review, “Because the original fairy tale was by the Brothers Grimm, I suppose there's a chance the village is in Germany, but it exists outside time and space, and seems to have been inspired by little plastic souvenir villages in airport gift shops.” He means populated with Hansel and Gretel.

Valerie (the very attractive Seyfried) wants to marry Peter (Fernandez), who is a wood chopper, but her parents have arranged her to marry a rich kid named Henry (Max Irons). The village for some time has been haunted by a werewolf, who only shows up when the moon is full and must be calmed by a weak little pig chained to a stump, so that it doesn’t get an appetite for villagers. Valerie’s sister, played by Alexandria Maillot, is found dead, amongst distracting cone-shaped haystacks dotted with purple flowers, which is not the type of detail you want to be looking at when a young girl has been killed (spoiler!) not eaten by a werewolf.

The villagers then go to Father Solomon, played by Gary Oldman, a popular werewolf fighter, and he arrives with an army of warriors and a very large elephant. Solomon, an expert, knows that werewolves are not werewolves all the time, and in between full moons they turn into men. Therefore, one of the villagers has to be a werewolf. This has a huge suggestion for Valerie’s possible future lover.

Ebert ended his review by saying, “But I know my readers. Right now, you aren't thinking about Valerie's romance. You're thinking, “Did I just read that Father Solomon arrived with a very large metal elephant?” Yes, he did. A very large metal elephant. I thought the same thing.” The must have been a whole lot of trouble, even harder than Herzog dragging a boat over a mountain. Showing Father Solomon’s men dragging a metal elephant through the woods – there’s your movie right there.

In the end, you shouldn’t watch this movie. It’s not good. The only thing that I really liked about this movie was Amanda Seyfried, because she is just attractive no matter what she is in, and can do a good job. I just don’t think that this take on the “Red Riding Hood” tale is good at all. I do think this was originally a tale by the Grimm Brothers, and I don’t think that I am wrong. However, like I said before, this isn’t a good adaptation and I think there are better ones that you should check out.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the next entry in “Halloween Month.”