“Fear makes
strangers of people who would be friends.” - Shirley MacLaine
Lately, there
has been a renewed wave of interest in all manner of things supernatural and
fantastical and occult. I guess the trend started in earnest with the Harry
Potter phenomenon, which generated a host of imitators, and then the Twilight
saga that spawned another rush of vampire books and movies, the ever-popular
comic superheroes that never really went away and now a flow of fairy tale
reinventions that have been retold to appeal all the more to an older audience.
We saw last
weekend Catherine Hardwicke’s 2011 movie “Red Riding Hood”
with David Johnson guilty of writing the screenplay and starring Amanda
Seyfried, Lukas Haas, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons and Gary Oldman. The film is
a rewrite of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, this version trying to cast
the tale in the Twilight mould (and cash in on the fans of that saga). Red Riding
Hood is not “Little”, but rather a nubile young village girl that is menaced by
a werewolf and whose affections are vied for by two young village lads.
The plot becomes
muddied by trying to be all things to all people and there is an attempt to
catch as many slices of the market as it can, but the main audience is the
young teen market with its penchant for creepy romances and neo-gothic horror
tales. The reduction of the story to a corny love triangle with the (bad CGI)
werewolf weaving in and out of the scenes periodically, all set in fake-looking
scenery just didn’t hit the spot with us, but probably was OK for the juvenile
market.
Add to that very
poor acting by the young leads: Seyfried as Red Riding Hood gives a very bland
performance (even though the script calls for her to be a little tinged with
evil!), Fernandez and Irons as the rival lovers are banally bad (mere eye candy
for young teen girls), while the older leads Billy Burke, Virginia Madsen and
Michael Shanks have some really corny and trifling lines to deliver and try to
do their best with what remarkably poor material they have been given. The best
acting came from veteran actress Julie Christie (still looking remarkably
attractive at 71 years of age) who played Red Riding Hood’s grandmother and
Gary Oldman who camped it up as a sadistic priest, and who didn’t go far enough
way out as the script didn’t allow it…
In case you are
interested in the plot, here it is, as supplied by Warner Brothers: “Valerie
(Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with
a brooding outsider, Peter (Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her
to marry the wealthy Henry (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
their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the
beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red
moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life. Hungry for revenge,
the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Oldman), to help them
kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns
that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the
death toll rises with each moon...”
Well Warner
Brothers, you have not even come close to the Brothers Grimm. The retelling of
this fairy tale fell well short of expectations and the climax was a bit of a
fizzer. Although, the ending did set the stage for a sequel (heaven forbid!). Don’t
bother with this one, watch instead the now classic 1981 “An American Werewolf in London"
or for more sexual tension and repressed beastliness see the 1984 “The Company of Wolves".
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