Red Riding Hood

"There's a big, bad wolf and someone has to stop it"

Following an unconvincing swoop through a CGI Medieval landscape we somehow arrive in what appears to be an American Medieval village that is being ravaged by a werewolf. Our heroine, Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is a young woman who lives in the village. She is in love with woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) but has been betrothed to the son of a wealthy blacksmith called Henry (Max Irons). Shortly after the wolf returns from a long absence and begins to kill, a (possibly) Dutch witch hunter called Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) rides into town inside a giant metallic elephant with a retinue of some African fellas and a Japanese chap. Solomon tries to hunt the wolf down while Valerie, given a red hood by her grandma, and her two love interests track the wolf as well.

This film is just an excuse for yet another tween Twilightified love triangle story. This effort has added fairytale elements, silly dancing and awful music. The plot is preposterous and the dialogue feels like it’s been lifted from half heard conversations at a Californian mall. This is by far the worst film I’ve seen in months, possibly all year.

The first thing that bothered me were the accents. I know that the story was first published in French and made famous by the Brothers Grimm in German but an American accented telling just feels wrong, especially with this terrible teen friendly script. It’s strange that we have become accustomed to seeing fairytales and fantasy films spoken with English accents but I couldn’t take this film seriously as I just imagined the cast discussing which Justin Beiber album is best or “why is my Mom like so freeking unfair?” “I know! Like whatevs’ OMG!” It just didn’t sit well with me. Gary Oldman’s character had a strange pan European accent which sounded dreadful and meandered from Dutch to German via the East End.

The second thing that annoyed me was the plot. It appears to have become the norm now that you need a love triangle for these sorts of films so that the predominantly teenage girl audience can decide if they’re Team what’s his face of Team the other guy. This isn’t in previous versions of the story and seems purely designed to cash in on the success of the Twilight series. What makes this worse is that the two male leads are so uncharismatic. I could barely tell the difference between them (or cared) and both were played terribly by Irons and Fernandez. The whole cast is terrible save for Seyfried who while hardly impressive is average, which here puts her a cut above the rest. Even the normally reliable Gary Oldman is uneven and feels miscast.  There are several side characters who look and sound like they have dressed up for their Senior school production of Like, totally Red Riding Hood. They are pointless.

The soundtrack features some unbelievably terrible soppy guitar music which, much like the accents feels totally misplaced. It’s another example of trying to appeal to its demographic in an overt and ridiculous manner. I even found myself making up lines to the instrumental music which fit with the terrible script.

Talking of the script, it was laugh out loud bad. In one scene the wolf is ripping people to shreds when a man comes running over to Gary Oldman and pronounces the insightful words that “it’s strong”. I burst out laughing at these lines. He might as well have run over and said “I’m wearing shoes”, “If I turn left, I’m not facing the same way as before” or “gosh, this film is dreadful”. Shortly after, when the wolf is talking to Seyfried she tells it “Oh my god. You can speak”. The script is littered with this sort of terrible plot explanation and wrong sounding dialogue to go with the wrong looking costumes and wrongly cast actors.

To say this film is bad would be like saying the surface of the sun is a little warm. This is an atrocious film which should be avoided by anyone with an IQ higher than a bucket of sand. How this film made $90 million. NINETY MILLION DOLLARS is beyond me.    

2/10