Le Chaperon rouge

The plot of Catherine Hardwicke's "Red Riding Hood" revolves around a series of massacres and a pressing question. The said massacres being caused by a werewolf and the said question being who the wolf is. But as I watched it, the question that kept on running through my mind was not who the wolf was, but rather who cares who the wolf was? This is a very flabby-footed, self-delusional mess of a movie that succeeds in making even the great Gary Oldman look as unnatural in his performance as Steven Seagal.

"Red Riding Hood" suffers from a poorly-constructed screenplay, one that seems was written within a handful of days and not given a single second of revision. The writer, David Johnson, was a production assistant on Frank Darabont's masterpiece "The Shawshank Redemption" but his talents seem to be more focused on polishing up a movie rather than spinning up a story. The plot of "Red Riding Hood" is contrived, flat, and lacking any zest. In fact, even though the denouement has great potential to be a real shocker and (I'll be honest) caught me by surprise, it was handled and executed so sloppily and the writing that summarizes it all up was so flimsy and manipulative, that it registered no impact on me whatsoever.

There are no characters worth caring about and next to nothing in terms of acting. The titular character is played by an up-and-coming starlet by the name of Amanda Seyfried, although if all of her performances are as uncharismatic and dull as this one, I cannot imagine why. In this performance, at least, she did not strike me as being a natural actress. Then again, she has nothing to work with in Mr. Johnson's screenplay. She also has two romantic interests, one played by Max Irons and the other by a wooden-faced Shiloh Fernandez. They are just as boring as their characters. They have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever with Miss Seyfried; I never felt any passion. Even Gary Oldman, so good so many times before, is awful here, hamming up and chewing apart every scene that he is in. His introductory moment, where he explains his experiences with werewolves, is handled by him in a way that is so over-the-top, almost like a really bad vaudeville performance. It's hard to believe that this is the same actor from "The Dark Knight," "The Book of Eli," and the Harry Potter movies.

If there is one good performance at all it is by Julie Christie, who is just as magnetic and wonderful as she was when she graced the screen in David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" forty-six years ago. She has a powerful star presence and quality that allows her to overcome even the trashy dialogue and nothingness that she was supplied.

Another strike against the movie is the apparent lack of experience by its director, Catherine Hardwicke. She was a production designer before this movie (she designed the wonderful town reconstruction for "Tombstone" in 1993) but her skills with a motion picture camera are next to nothing. She doesn't seem to even know the basics about misc en scene and how to structure a sequence. Not even enough to know that a moment where Mr. Oldman gives a last minute warning to a stubborn old villager about the impending threat of the werewolf that she should have had a reverse angle to show the villager's reaction; instead she chooses to stick to the back of his head. There is no steady flow of images here, with too many medium and long shots and close-ups so claustrophobic that they enter the territory of being loony. One scene that was directed particularly badly was a laughable love moment between Miss Seyfriend and Mr. Fernandez. There is a problem with a romantic moment where the sight of two people making love is neither heart-warming, nor, obviously, erotic.

But Miss Hardwicke did coordinate well with her production designer, for the sets are quite good. And the special effects are decent enough in and of themselves. The werewolf, computer-generated of course, are much better than the cartoony wolves I saw in "Season of the Witch" earlier this year. It's only a shame that that wolf was not on-screen more.

"Red Riding Hood" has a feel of so many medieval melodramas of recent years: half-hearted and flimsy. It is also crippled by that haunting feeling that even the people who made the movie would not even want to see it. It feels like an assignment done by people hopelessly unhappy in their work, who just wanted to get through the dailies so they could go home and relax before getting up to do the same thing again the next day.

You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of a film ruined by trying to be too many things to too many people than Red Riding Hood, which opens Friday and, by all rights, should close Saturday.

The most obvious audience Hood hopes to attract is fans of the Twilight film series, snagging the director of the first film, Catherine Hardwicke, and refashioning the Little Red Riding Hood folk tale into, in a remarkably halfhearted way, a love triangle between three extraordinarily uninteresting characters. (If all three had been eaten by the wolf in the first act, we might have been onto something.)

What's weird about Hood, which inexplicably counts Leonardo DiCaprio as one of its producers (stick to swimming in icy water, Leo), is that this romantic angle is not its main thrust. It doesn't have a main thrust.

In fact, for a supposedly sexier take on a classic folk tale, it's in desperate need of thrust in general.

It flits around the idea of being a more adult folk tale but never commits. It throws in a bit of (pretty bad) CGI werewolf attack action from time to time, but it's nowhere near violent or bloody enough (it's PG-13) to interest action or horror fans. It has moments of campy fun, specifically every second Gary Oldman appears as a sinister Cardinal Richelieu-type character, but other scenes are played ridiculously straight.

Perhaps the film's biggest mistake — and that's saying something — is structuring itself like a Scream film. The Big Bad Wolf is indeed a werewolf, and our sweet little Red (named Valerie, played by Amanda Seyfried) has to figure out which of her fellow villagers turns into a beast when the moon is full. Is it her forbidden love, the dull as dishwater Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), who presumably equates to the hunter of the folk tale? Or is it the man she's been arranged to marry, the somehow even duller Henry (Max Irons)? Or is it one the other remarkably dull villagers? And given how dull Valerie is, who the hell really cares?

On looks alone, Seyfried perhaps is perfectly cast as Red, considering Christina Ricci might be a bit too old for the role. Seyfried's pristine, alabaster skin and enormous eyes give Red just the right look, but every time she opens her mouth you're begging for that werewolf to put her out of our misery.

To be fair, no actor could be expected to excel given the cheesy dialogue and Hardwicke's uninspired direction; solid veterans such as Virginia Madsen, Julie Christie and Lukas Haas struggle to make an impression, with Christie holding up the best. As Red's father, Billy Burke seems more zoned out than James Franco at the Oscars, suggesting he's only here for one more Twilight connection.

Only Oldman acquits himself well, simply because he treats the film as the campfest it should have been from the opening credits. He's acting in an entirely different movie, a Sam Raimi romp like Army of Darkness or Drag Me to Hell, and Red Riding Hood briefly becomes almost fun during Oldman's most animated scenes.

The film doesn't even look that great in a technical sense: The exteriors look fake, all clearly shot on soundstages, and not fake in an intentional "this is a dreamy heightened reality, because this is a folk tale" way. They look fake in a "we really suck at our jobs" way.

Red Riding Hood is pretending to be a darker, more adult take on the folk tale, but it's hardly the first: Neil Jordan mined the territory in 1984 with the R-rated The Company of Wolves, focusing more on sexual metaphors and heavy werewolf action. It wasn't great, but at least it knew what it wanted to be. Red Riding Hood tries to be a little bit of everything, but ultimately it succeeds only in being a tedious mess.

I have never written a review before, nor have cared enough to look and read through reviews in the first place. However, I do have something to say about this movie, and the reviewers who think their opinions are worth listening to.

In my case, I go in to watch movies on non-biased terms. Meaning, I do not go in with any pretenses or theories jaded by others speculation. I go in to watch what the movie is offering, and interpret it in to my own fashion, seeing as every one will have their own opinions. So, I did the exact same prep with this film. I bought my ticket, sat in my seat, didn't think twice about what I was about to see, and just watched.

I loved Red Riding Hood. I thought it was beautiful, it was subtle and sexy- especially with the knock out soundtrack- and, most importantly, I went on a journey with the film. It kept me hooked, and although there were a few silly moments or corny lines, I still found myself lost in the mystery and the unknowing of the film. All movies will have their faults, or what I like to call, inflections. One, for me, was wanting to see a more developed character of Valerie and her family. I would have enjoyed seeing a relationship between her and her sister before Lucie was killed and where to story we saw began, as I would have understood her pain on the same level. As well, I would have liked to have seem more about her Grandmother and the way she lived at the same age as Valerie growing up with the Wolf and its legend. To me, that would have made the film a whole and the storyline would have become more dynamic. But, seeing as they wanted to have this film out in theatres and not as a mini series, I think what they put in the film fit wonderfully with the time gap of the audience's attention.

Now, it is one thing to review a movie on it's pros and cons and to point out where the plot failed or the story line succeeded. However, it is another thing to write a review comparing it to a movie with the same director and showing the apparent similarities. Yes, I am talking about all you reviewers who only had one thing to say: Twilight. I have seen Twilight, I have painfully endured Twilight, and I dismissed Twilight. Twilight has a flawed script and storyline, and I personally believe the only good Twilight was the first Twilight, as Catherine was able to draw the attention away from the story line with the visuals, the camera angles, etc. To try and accuse Red Riding Hood of being a "Twilight clone" is absurd. If you were to compare anything to Twilight, I'm sure you would find some similarities. It's what makes movies Movies. All movies follow the same structure. There will always be conflict, there will always be a climax, and there will always be a resolution. If you know Red Riding Hood, the actual story, not the censored picture book you were read as a child, then you would know that the censored version is a simple, straight forward idea. The Brothers Grimm tale is however, what you SHOULD be comparing this film to. And, I believe the director, the camera crew, the actors, etc all played in to this old, twisted fairy tale we all think we know and did a very good job of it.

All in all, Red Riding Hood did what it was supposed to. Entertain, and keep you on the edge of your seat. It's beautiful, it is gracious and it is well adapted.

Now, go and read the Brothers Grimm tale!

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to see this movie. I am not a fan of the Twilight movies(the first of which Catherine Hardwicke also directed) and it didn't look like my kind of film. But I saw it for the wonderful Gary Oldman.

I 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

Has it become increasingly difficult to write an ending? Have writers suddenly forgotten that the climax is the high point of a story? Or is Hollywood getting lazy? Red Riding Hood is probably the most frustrating and unsatisfying movie I've been to, and the above reason is just one of many. While it certainly isn't bad, I haven't finished feeling so let down since Haneke's "The White Ribbon".

Of course, Hardwicke is a director who is willing take big risks. She did so with Twilight, which was a huge smash with teens everywhere. And she does have a good eye for a shot, and several scenes here show. If had to recommend the movie for one thing alone, it would be for the visuals. The look of the film has a gorgeous, lush and colourful palette that made this film worth seeing on the big screen.

The film's biggest problem aside from being anti-climatic is that the plot is just... a mangled mess. It reads like a really bad fanfiction. If you thought Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland was bad... .wait till you get a load of this movie. We have several plot points that come in and suddenly are left do die, one of which includes Father Solomon played by Gary Oldman, who is made to be a crazy bastard type character, and we don't see anything to prove it. To top it all off, it's rife with clichés, like the obligatory love triangle, the whodunit, damned protagonist.

The actors are a mixed bag. Seyfried does a good job here and has plenty of emotion in her performance. She has plenty of cheesy lines but she does a good job for what she has to work with. Gary Oldman was also great, but that was expected as he always shines with every performance. On the downside, Shiloh Fernandez gives one of the worst performances ever here. He spends the whole movie looking like he wants to punch someone and reads his lines like he's reading them off a paper. And Virginia Madsen just awful here as well, and is over-acting Billy Burke In short Red Riding Hood is a film that has plenty of promise, but sadly doesn't live up to it. It isn't a bad film by any means, but you are most likely to leave disappointed.