Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
3/15/11
A funny
thing happened while Thirteen director Catherine Hadwicke was collecting
a quick paycheck to direct some movie about a teenage girl in love with
a vampire: catching a massive wave of literary popularity, Twilight
became the highest grossing movie ever directed by a woman. While
it may open some doors to her, it also poses a problem: to the extent
that there was a Hardwicke Brand prior to its release, it certainly had
nothing to do with tween-baiting blockbusters, and now, for better or worse,
that's exactly what she's expected to stand for. So, for her follow-up,
we get Red Riding Hood, which attempts to deliver high concept fantasy
monsters, mild thrills and teen romance while also sprinkling in some genuine
quality in the form of big-ticket supporting actors and plot threads best
described as a road show production of The Crucible. However
it was meant to work, what limps into theaters is a mess, at once high-minded
allegory, basic cable monster movie and Harlequin romance, all wrapped
in the trappings of a fairy tale that doesn't prove a particularly sturdy
vehicle for any of the above. Shorn to a hair under 100 minutes and
pasted together with narration and dream sequences, Red Riding Hood
has too much weird stuff going on to be dull. But the longer it goes
on, the more it becomes clear that this basket is seriously bereft of goodies.
At
some unspecified ancient time in what may or may not be Merry Old England,
young lovers Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) and Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) are
kept apart because her mother (Virginia Madsen) has betrothed her to Henry
(Max Irons), the son of wealthy Adrien Lazar (Michael Shanks). They
are preparing to run off together when screams from the village square
alert Valerie to the death of her sister at the fangs of The Wolf, the
local lycanthrope rumored to live in a cave in the woods. A years-long
truce has been broken, and Adrien leads her father Cesaire (Billy Burke)
and the other local men into the woods to hunt the beast. Adrien's
killed, but the townspeople think the grey wolf they brought down is the
offending creature. But Father Auguste (Lukas Haas) had already summoned
Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), the reigning expert on all things werewolf,
and he debunks their hopes: werewolves revert back to their human
form upon their death. So, the creature still roams free, and Solomon
is certain it lurks not in the forest, but among the townspeople, and now
is the time of the Blood Moon, that once-ever-thirteen-years occurrence
when Mars, the Moon and the Earth align just right so that those bitten
by The Wolf become werewolves themselves rather than simply die.
The villagers scoff and stage a wild celebration of the Wolf's death, at
which the beast attacks and claims more victims... and speaks to Valerie,
the only person in town who understands the creature. Its message
is clear: she must leave town with it or more people will die.
But as Solomon locks the village down to pursue his mad obsession with
bringing down The Wolf, he's fairly certain what understanding its words
makes Valerie, and it also starts with a “W”.
You
may have noticed that nowhere in that plot synopsis did I mention Valerie
falling in love with a wolf, and that Warner Bros. is happy to encourage
Twi-Hards to believe that's a key element of Red Riding Hood's plot
is but one of the many tricks it plays on potential viewers. While
Hardwick does get some mileage out of the contrast between Valerie's red
cloak and the winter woodlands in which the movie is set, it's not nearly
the visual feast those carefully-chosen clips would imply. In fact,
while the production could afford to build its own sets and cast big names
like Seyfried and Oldman, RRH actually has more in common with the
SyFy Original Movies in which one often sees Shanks. The CGI wolf
isn't much to write home about, aggressively unscary and oddly oily-looking.
Only the very young or those totally averse to the genre are likely to
find Red Riding Hood even the least bit scary.
And
it doesn't have much else with which to compensate, though not for lack
of trying. The Solomon subplot is perhaps the first in history to
lay a legitimate claim to having been ripped off from The Crucible,
but there's just not enough time for the crazed Father to terrorize the
town enough to put any meat on its bones. And whoever thought to
have him cart around a giant metal elephant in which his victims are burned
alive was clearly smoking the BAD weed: Gary Oldman is one of our
finest actors, but his ability to sell lines like “Place him in... the
elephant!” only goes so far. While Seyfried gives her role everything
she's got and then some (what big eyes she has, and she's not afraid to
widen them for dramatic effect even when there's no apparent reason, just
to try and give this turkey a goose), there's zero chemistry between her
and either Fernandez or Irons, neither of whom makes much of an impression,
making any romance regardless of species a non-starter. Writer David
Johnson tries to stuff in as much feminist deconstruction as his plot will
hold, but his attempts to go to the Red Riding Hood stuff are much worse
than a person might even fear, and even a mildly kicky bit with Valerie
doing the whole “what big teeth you have” bit with her Grandma (Julie Christie)
is wasted on a dream sequence.
The
performances are a decidedly mixed bag, creating an “everybody's on their
own!” feel. While Seyfried and Oldman do their best and enliven the
proceedings whenever possible, neither Burke, who spends most of the movie
drinking from a flask with exactly the same hand gesture, nor Madsen will
likely be listing this one prominently on their resumes. Christie
does as good a job as anyone could of parading around the “I'm The Wolf!
Really!” sign the script hands her. Haas is quite good in the Reverend
Hale role, actually having more luck with the Arthur Miller wing of the
story than anyone else. Shanks is impressive as the leading man of
the movie's first 20 minutes and probably seems more at home in the Quasi-Ancient
Times setting than anyone else, and Kacey Rohl has a single great scene
where she delivers a speech that seems to be referencing the deleted scenes
section of the forthcoming DVD with such conviction I didn't even care
that it was coming out of nowhere.
When
someone makes soup out of another character and then opines that they didn't
want to kill them, you know you're watching a seriously troubled production.
Red Riding Hood is a dreadful mess, but certainly one that will
hold your attention. And Johnson works so many red herrings, you've
even got a fairly good chance of being surprised when The Wolf is finally
unmasked. But the damage from all this nonsense to the Teen Horror
Hardwicke Brand could be substantial. Which might be just what her
career needs. |
