You are forgiven if you sense a certain 2011 resonance in these scenes.
Red Riding Hood tries, as all fairy tales must, to enchant the audience
in some magical way that makes them forget where they are. On a scale of
terrible to terrific, this one falls somewhere south of the middle, not great
but not entirely a lost cause. Parents be seriously warned that the famous wolf
is a triumph of screen terror likely to be far too much for your young, and
maybe for you too. Oddly, in a movie of inspired visuals, the story itself is a
quite dull soap opera.
To give blame
where blame is due, Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) directed; David Johnson wrote
the story, based very loosely on the tale by the brothers Grimm. A little
understanding of Mr. Johnson's plot will serve you well. A medieval village
lives in terror of a wolf who has been held at bay by animal sacrifices offered
him by the villagers. If I tell you that the wolf comes out with the Blood Moon
and that a bitten victim - if he recovers - becomes a werewolf, you have nearly
the whole plot.
Valerie
(Amanda Seyfried) is in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), a handsome
woodcutter, but she has been promised by her parents to Henry (Max Irons, and
yes, you'll be hearing more from Jeremy Irons' son), a blacksmith with family
money. When the werewolf kills Valerie's sister, the villagers summon Solomon
(Gary Oldman), a werewolf connoisseur who arrives with a retinue of armed and
armored guards pulling an enormous iron elephant whose bottom is a fireplace
beneath a compartment for eliciting confessions from victims stashed in the
smoke chamber.
Solomon
announces that the werewolf, who resumes his human appearance with the passing
of the Blood Moon, is indeed a fellow resident, one of them to be exact. In the
ensuing investigation of the villagers, Solomon, whose wisdom is without doubt
questionable, plays on the superstitions and prejudices of his constituents in
his hunt for the wolf among them. You are forgiven if you sense a 2011 resonance
in these scenes.
And now to
the good part. Valerie goes over the river and through the woods to
Grandmother's house only infrequently but when she does, guess who grandma is:
the ever luminous Julie Christie who is thoroughly convincing as a suspect. The
sets and landscape (it was filmed in British Columbia) are grand. Village and
villagers are a marvelous cross between an Advent calendar and a Peter Breughel
painting come to life. So effective is this sudden vitality in an Old Master
scene that we are startled every time the villagers speak in contemporary
colloquialisms. Henry's "Okay" pierces the medieval air. My earnest suggestion
for the sequel: rehire everyone connected to the sets and cinematography who
made the movie gorgeous to watch. Then instruct all young actors to keep their
mouths shut. We can figure out what's happening in a fairy tale without having
to hear "Peter, Get me outta here."
Copyright (c) Illusion