Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first Twilight film, then
ran screaming in the opposite direction of that franchise (and who can blame her?)
has released her latest film. In Red Riding Hood,
Amanda Seyfried stars as...well, Little Red Riding Hood, before she started wearing the red cloak
(this is a reboot, after all). She lives very happily in a little
fairy-tale-type village, casually dating the boy from the other side of the
creek (this takes place before the industrial revolution, before train tracks
were invented; but they still had people from the bad part of town--that is,
when the entire town wasn’t bad…but I digress).
Little Miss Hood is happy as a pig in a blanket (where’d that phrase come from,
anyway? Do pigs really sleep in blankets--oh, never mind, there I go digressing
again) until she learns that her parents have promised her to be married to the
son of the blacksmith, who turns out to be just as bad an actor as the guy
playing her hunky love interest (is there some cinematic rule that requires the
male actors playing the love interests in a triangle must be as wooden as the
forest that surrounds this town?). But these soap opera antics are forgotten
when the town gets raided by a wolf that kills Hood’s sister (and Hood’s sister
was named Hoodie. Really!).
A band of men from the village, led by Colonel Tigh (Michael Hogan), from
Battlestar Galactica, go out and kill the wolf--but not before it kills Dr.
Daniel Jackson, from Stargate (Michael Shanks). Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman),
werewolf killer, soon shows up and--using the same accent he had when he played
Dracula--informs the villagers that the werewolf is one of them! Jinkies! Amanda
Seyfried is a wonderful actress; it was no surprise to me that her career exploded
after she left Big Love. But even her natural charm couldn’t save this mess.
While the village sets are impressive, Hardwicke doesn’t really create any real
sense of time or place here. Tim Burton still made you believe you
were in the eighteenth century with Sleepy Hollow. Here,
the setting feels as fake as a soundstage. And although she’s armed with a strong
cast (with the exception of the pair of wooden totem poles playing Seyfried’s
competing love interests), neither the flat, lifeless script, nor Hardwicke’s
uninspired direction can make these characters come to life. The result is a
very pretty movie that makes for nice eye candy, but nothing more. "Why, Grandma,
what a horribly bad script your movie has!" "All the more to bomb at the box
office with, my dear!"
--SF
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