Red Riding Hood (2011)
Starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Virginia Madsen, and Julie Christie
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
While these are certainly adequate descriptors of any of the Twilight flicks, it also fits Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke's newest teenage angst melodrama Red Riding Hood, a re-imagining of the classic Grimm fairy tale. Here Amanda Seyfried is Valerie, a young gal living in some European town in the wooded mountains in what is likely the 1800s (even though the ladies still wear tons of make-up and apparently have access to flat-irons for their hair). She's in love with her childhood sweetheart Peter, but she's set to be married to Henry (the names of the two actors are irrelevant...as are their characters). In the midst of this romantic triangle, there's a werewolf wreaking havoc on the townsfolk. There's some kind of gobbledy-gook spouted by religious figure Solomon (Gary Oldman) that states that the werewolf comes out once every few years when the moon turns red in order to pass on his werewolf genes to someone else. Of course, the moon is now red and the werewolf's on a mission to take a bite out of someone. Now we just have to guess which one of Amanda's fellow townsfolk is half-canine. (Needless to say, the identity of the monster was guessed by this viewer a mere twenty minutes into the film.)
Red Riding Hood seriously looked just like a spin-off of the Twilight films. Hardwicke's direction is simply a paint-by-numbers replica of that series. From the soundtrack to the sets to the camera shots (all of which were actually decent), the film didn't feel "original" in the slightest. The acting by Amanda Seyfried is just as bland and boring as that of Kristen Stewart. Even supporting actors like Gary Oldman and Julie Christie find themselves unable to rise out of the muck that is the lousy script.
The RyMickey Rating: D+
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