Red Riding Hood

by Racheal Rauch

This is just one of the overused one liners the audience must suffer through when watching Twilight II – aka Red Riding Hood.

What’s meant to happen here is the village sorts out its wolf problem, which is close enough to the traditional story. They even throw in the well known verse “what big eyes you have” etc. Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), a villager, dons a scarlet red cloak and hey presto we have little Red Ridding Hood. Nice.

What actually happens is that half the film is spent with the love triangle lusting after each other. Valerie has two admirers, the bad boy who she wants and is wrong for her (Peter) and the good guy who she doesn’t want but she has an arranged marriage with (Henry). They’re both hot so I don’t see what the problem is. My advice would be go with the bad boy first as they’re usually short term recreation anyways and then go with the long term option, that way she gets the bets of both worlds.

The other half of the film is spent with everyone in the village running around accusing each other of being the werewolf. Forget a top 3 or a short list pretty much everyone is a suspect. I’m surprised they don’t suspect the audience at some point.

This leads to problem numbero uno. No one really knows what’s going on. It’s as if they’ve got a whole bunch of scenes plopped them together and called it a motion picture. There is no flow, its disjointed, jagged and unnatural, manufactured instead of organic. There’s zero character growth. Maybe I missed this part in the film but as I see it the heroine doesn’t start with a flaw and go on some sort of journey and come out changed. Which, as Artistole called it and now everyone knows, this makes for a good story.

A whole bunch of stuff doesn’t make sense. Like when they first decide to go after the wolf, a whole bunch of alpha males race off into the forest amidst snow and lots of it with nothing but a sword. I like the White Knight vibe, but they are highly impractical ones. Helloooo food and water anyone? If the wolf is so vicious and you need 50 of you, then you’re not really going to be back for a beer in 10.

Meanwhile the women are all running around in dresses and that’s it. Virtually every scene is snowing. I feel cold just looking at it although this probably has something to do with the hectic cinema air con. The guys have just a thin shirt on all day every day, although I’m cool with this as it shows off their buffness. I shouldn’t pass judgment on all these people clearly blessed with warm blood unlike me, but it detracts from any sort of realism. The whole thing looks like a big ass studio in LA where they crank the snow machines and then walk outside to the sun for smoko without needing to get changed. Then there’s the bizarre celebratory dance that they do with two chicks. It’s a form of dirty dancing from what I can tell and that’s apparently their village dance which they all do in front of each other. I guess anything goes when there’s an impending wolf attack and your all about to die.

The saving grace to the film comes in the form of eye candy. Sweeping vistas and strapping young lads for the females and for the males there’s Amanda Seyfried – she’s got the lips, the eyes and the hair – and her smoking hot mum or MILF is today’s trendy term I believe. Also on the upside the colour palette is aesthetically pleasing, Valerie’s red coat is juxtaposed nicely to the pristine snow and the black tones of the forbidden lover Peter.

I don’t blame them for attempting a Twilight wannabe. The world is in the grips of Twilight hysteria. It’s probably allowing a Producer to own an island in the Pacific, and who doesn’t want that. Valerie’s dad is also Bella’s dad (Billy Burke), Leo Dicaprio is one of the producer’s and they got Catherine Hardwick, director of Twilight, who started the whole phenomenon in the first place. But Twilight is better. There’s an overall story arc to it. It progresses appropriately, like a roller coaster. The intense tone builds up slowly. At least RRH’s score goes ok as it’s similar to Twilight so they got that right.

In Red Riding Hood they’ve tried to start with the best bits of Twilight, where the forbidden lovers try to get it on in a forest. But it doesn’t work because we don’t know the characters well enough yet, it hasn’t eased us into it. All good things come to those who wait but here they try to jump right to the best part.

So they went with a similar formula to Twilight, shit weather + forbidden love + pain in the ass supernatural problem = lots of money, but in this case it = a mess but still probably lots of money.

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