Red Riding Hood (2011)

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke / Written by David Leslie Johnson






There's something I have to get off my chest before I get into dissecting yet another case of moving pictures. Before seeing Red Riding Hood I hadn't yet formed a clear opinion on Amanda Seyfried and her acting. Everything has now crystallised: Amanda is a lousy actress. This movie gave her plenty of chances to show what she's got, but she blew them all. Her sister dies? She gapes for air like a dying fish, her eyes revealing that she knows she's supposed to be acting out pain and shock but not knowing how to, screams a petty "no" and makes it apparent that she has never experienced the pain of a loss in her entire life. The reaction reminded me of a 12-year-old finding out someone has been reading her super secret diary and throwing a tantrum. Amanda, that close-up shot of your face was your chance. You screwed it up. I am not convinced. Now that I got that off my face, I can get down to the plot itself. I had seen the trailer and made my guesses about the identity of the wolf (I was wrong, but we'll get to that) and also about the nature of this movie, which I was correct about. It was god damn predictable and annoyed me to no end, as the movie kept on building big suspenseful cliffhangers when I already knew what was coming up. I'm not sure wether the fault is in the script or the directing; Whichever the case, the story was dull and made me care about none of the characters involved. A basic "boy loves girl, girl loves another boy, oops there's a monster involved and ooh-how-convenient it wants the girl as well" plot with a very distinguishable three-point storyline doesn't get far with just pretty costumes. And now that I got to the costumes, I'll talk a bit about the setting of time and place in this film. The timeframe was clearly left a bit vague to create a storybook-like atmosphere, and to me the setting seemed to be "(not too) long ago, somewhere far away (and cold)". Except that the winter didn't feel like a real northern winter, as I think it was supposed to feel, with such obvius fake snow, ridiculously light clothing and stupid lines such as "it was the hardest winter in ages". Yo girl, you come here to Finland and spend some time in those clothes in -30 celsius in knee-deep snow and THEN tell me it was a tough winter. Jeez. I know that when produced in Hollywood the target audience for these "grown-up fairytales with a twist" are the US teenage girls, but surely even they know how to dress properly when it's cold enough for snow not to melt? There's one big risk in making a movie set in an old age: not making it carefully enough. If you leave in such modern things as body-licking dresses (duh, the leading actress can't wear a sack like all the other women), casual speech and, for god's sake, sexy night club dancing with a little hint to medieval court dances (which is also not historically correct especially if these people have lived in a forest village all their lives and thus can not have been exposed to fancy prancy dancing), I GET MAD. How is anyone going to take the setting seriously with such foolish fan-service? The props and dresses were otherwise very well made and a pleasure to watch, it's just the "let's make the head girl sexay" -attitude that I can't bear. If you pick a timeframe, no matter how vague, please stick to it. The theme of evil living inside a person was very interesting and I think much more could have been done with that. Right when it started to get good the movie was already over. Instead, the focus was in the romantic relationship, but this movie was at least honest about it form the beginning; It didn't try to disguise itself into adventure or politics or even the horror film it could have been and embraced the romance throughout the story. The nature of the love triangle irked me though, as these do in most Hollywood films. From the very beginning the girl was portrayed as the passive receiver to be taken by the whims of men, and to be happy only when loved by a man. Even during the almost-sex scene her only line is "Don't you want me?" when the man in question has made it pretty clear he does. The rivalling man says: "You will be happy again", as if its his job to make the female happy. Otherwise, though, I was happy with the rival boy Henry: He was kind, friendly and honourable, instead of being the nasty lusty stereotype of "the other guy", and actually earned Valerie's respect. To contrast that, "the true love" Peter was a bit of a bad boy, as these type of characters tend to be these days (Twilight, anyone?). Valerie states that he was always one to lure her into shenanigans, and during the movie acts like a real douchebag, but not too much to make him an obvious dickhead. So tell me: Why did there need to be a contrast like this between the two guys, and why is it the trend nowadays for the bad boy to get the girl? Why is the prince charming no longer the winner? And about the wolf, yeah, actually the wolf thing was so boring I almost don't even want to write about it. I figured out the wolf before it was actually revealed. This kind of a mystery is very hard to portray with all the layers of doubt, deceit and paranoia it deserves when your media of choice is a two-hour film with a romantic focus; A 500-page novel would be a completely different and more suitable platform for such a story. PS. I just learned the director of this movie also directed the Twilight movies. Not surprised! Ha ha!