Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Red Riding Hood, warning spoilers

I'm afraid this post will be rather short.  Once again I'm stuck with movie options.  I just haven't found too many interesting topics.  This week it's Red Riding Hood (2011) directed by Catherine Hardwicke and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and friends.  *Sigh*.  It just hurts.  The film actually had a surprising amount of potential.

The story interweaves a number of different legends concerning the big bad wolf.  In this case it's actually a werewolf, which I thought was cool but also scared me.  Not in a horror genre kind of way; no I was afraid of some Twilight varnishing.  The interactions between Valerie (the main character) and her male suitor are shallow and tepid.  Sorry to say it, but they seemed to lack in acting talent.  I hate to think it was the director since women are rare in that job.  Anyway all the adult actors were pretty good.  Gary Oldman was predictably awesome.  And he has a wonderful backstory on why he's an inquisitor who hunts down werewolves.  And the mystery of who's the werewolf is actually pretty reasonable.  There's decent action and the story is surprising.  But then the ending threw it all away.  It basically ends with "I'll wait at the edge of the forest for my dark lover to return".  I mean, that's ok.  Nothing wrong there.  But they had so many other end-game options for Valerie.  That she's so invested in this one guy falls a little flat.  It's a very Twilight ending.  But it still had some neat stuff, and I still enjoy a good fairy tale.

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