Hello fellow moviegoers, I'm TheCinemaChick and I check out movies so you know what's going on. Tonight, I'm taking on two classic fairy tales. Let's talk about Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and The Beast. That's right, I saw Red Riding Hood and Beastly today. Without further ado...here we go.
Once upon a time, in a movie theatre far far away, there were two girls. One was a movie fan who loved to write reviews and the other one was in it for the eye candy. They were friends, though they were very different people. Their names were TheCinemaChick and Fry.
Ok, I can't write like I'm in a fairy tale. I'm too much of a realist. But yes, Fry and I watched Red Riding Hood earlier today. We even took notes after the film. Overall, it was decent. It's not scary, it's not terribly suspenseful, but I did enjoy it. We get a movie with some surprising twists that I won't reveal in case you want to see it and don't want me spoiling it for you. As you've seen by the previews, Amanda Seyfried plays the lead character, who is named Valerie. Personally, I don't think the name fit the film, but I didn't write this.
My first problem came with the opening scene. It's a wide sweeping shot, which is called an establishing shot. I did take a year of film classes, so I do know something about cinematography. It is a beautiful shot of mist and trees, HOWEVER, it looked too much like Twilight. I will admit, Catherine Hardwick directed this and she is the same person who directed the sparkly vampire movie that I am not a fan of. Get used to this bird's eye views of expanses of land, you'll see them a lot in 100 minutes.
We get a tiny prequel after the credits, which by the way, Leonardo DiCaprio worked on this film. That adds a dose of awesomeness to this. We see Valerie with her friend Peter. They sneak off into a sunny meadow (sound familiar?) and trap a cute little white bunny. Valerie hands it to Peter, but he can't kill it, so he makes her do it. This scene is important, it comes into play later. We skip ahead about 13 years so everyone is grown up. Valerie is the hot girl in the village with her lovely blond hair. I did notice that the is the only blonde woman, not counting her mother. Everyone else is either a redhead or brunette. Along with Valerie, we have her two potential love interests, Henry, who will wear mostly light colors and Peter the dark, brooding boy with the badass appeal.
Here's a thought. Henry is like the medieval Edward and Peter is the medieval Jacob.
Well, Valerie's sister gets killed by the wolf, so the men go hunting and kill it. The stick its head on a pike, happy that their troubles will be over. Oh happy day!
Wrong. If that were the case, I would have just spent four bucks on about ten minutes of a film. While in a tavern, Father Auguste (played by Lukas Haas) informs the tavern that he has summoned Gary Oldman, I mean Solomon. Solomon is known for being able to kill werewolves. The mean decide they don't need him, even though this problem has apparently been going on for over twenty years. Um...seems to me that if you have a rogue werewolf that's been killing people for two decanes and you haven't solved it yet, shouldn't you call in a backup? I mean if you can't kill it after this long...hell, if I see ants for more than two days I call in the expert, but maybe they have trouble finding people for the village since it is out in the middle of nowhere.
Sounds like the college I went to.
Solomon arrives with a giant, I assume is ceramic, elephant and his two daughters. They aren't given names, and you never see them again, so there is no need to bother talking about them. Solomon admits he killed his wife while drunk because he and his friends were drunk and went to hunt the werewolf. He cut off its paw, took it home and saw that his wife was bleeding. It turns out, she was the wolf. He had her hand. To make things even creepier, he keeps the hand to show to people.
The village throws a massive celebration because they have a wolf head on a stick. At this point, Peter has told Valerie he doesn't want her because she is engaged to Henry through an arranged marriage by her mother. Everything about this screams Twilight, only in a medieval setting. Taylor Lautner was even considered to play Peter. Oh yeah...irony.
Not shockingly, the wolf shows up, kills people and Gary Oldman tries to kill it. I wondered if Solomon had a breathing problem because he sounded like a German man with asthma. He was quite wheezy. Well, they don't kill the wolf, but end up having to kill one of his guards who was bitten. This mythology says that you can't become a werewolf by a scratch, you have to be bitten during the blood moon. Conveniently, it's the blood moon. Everyone runs and hides. Valerie is with her friend Prudence when the wolf comes up to her. To her surprise, Valerie can hear the wolf. Yes, all werewolves have telepathy. He wants her to run away with him, to live in happiness somewhere else. I have a problem with this too.
You're going to spend a lot of time wondering who the wolf is. It could be Henry or it might be Jacob, I mean Peter. Could it be Valerie's mother or grandmother? What if it's Father Auguste? Well...it's not Father Auguste. He dies. The only clue you are given is the wolf's message and the fact that his human eyes are dark brown. And then we have more paranoia and speculation which culminates in the famous lines. "My what big eyes/ears/teeth you have".
I'm going to stop here because at this point, we have the climax. You learn who the wolf is, what Amanda's connection to it is, who she ends up with and basically, I still think it's too much like Twilight. Only in Red Riding Hood, she won't end up with a disco ball vampire boyfriend.
So, Fry and I agreed that visually, we loved it. The setting is pretty authentic and I loved the costumes. We also agree on how we did not see that ending. Guess all you want, but the wolf is not who you think it is. Fry would also like to say that she enjoyed the hot guys in the film. I will admit that brooding Peter was hot and so was Father Auguste, but I don't see movies for eye candy. It was a really good interpreation of a classic childhood story with a good modern edge to it. I managed to pay attention and not get bored too much during the film.
However, this movie was too Twilight-y for me. You might as well name the characters Bella, Edward and Jacob. They have no personality, the don't really show any emotions and they didn't convince me that they were good. Poor Gary Oldman can't hold an accent either. Count how many times he switches from German to English.
My biggest problem is that some things are left unanswered. Where did Solomon's children go? They show up, you see them and they are carted off. *Spoiler* Solomon gets bitten and is killed, so what happens to his girls? Why does Grandmother live in the middle of the forest by herself? How did she not know who the wolf was (hint). And what was up with the spiked trees? Did they plan on killing someone by throwing them against a tree?
And most importantly, why Catherine Hardwick?
Now, to help you with my blogs, I have developed a ratings system. Here it is, from highest to lowest:
Would pay full price for it
Matinee worthy
Dollar theater
DVD rental
Don't even bother with Redbox
Fry and I came to the same conclusion. Go see it during a matinee or at the dollar theater. Yes it's good, but it's not "Oh my gosh, that's effing fantastic!" It was simply acceptable. It's not a horror, it's just a Twilight ripoff.
Well, I'm TheCinemaChick and on behalf of myself and Fry, I bid you happy movie watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment