Carl the Critic: Reviews "Red Riding Hood" [Warning: Contains Spoilers Alerts (including who the wolf is)]
Carl the Critic Reviews "Red Riding Hood" [Caution contains Spoiler Alerts]
EXPECTATIONS: Let's get one thing straight, I like Cathrine Hardwicke. I think she is a very talented director who is a great visual story teller, even with the first "Twilight" movie, but the thing with "Twilight" is you can get the finest polish in the the world, but the world's finest polish couldn't make a turd look any better. So I don't blame her for "Twilight," I blame the writer of the original novel. But as I watched the trailer to "Red Riding Hood," I couldn't help but feel that this might just be another "Twilight" just with different characters. My expectations are that the acting will be better than in "Beastly," with a better cast, but, like "Beastly" the story will be a "chick-flick" version of a classic fairy tale.
EXPERIENCE: The thing that I had most feared about this movie came true, this was indeed a twilight movie, but before you judge let me just say that it was what Twilight wished it could be. Overall the driving force that made this movie watchable was guessing who the werewolf really is. Through out the movie people had kept guessing "It's Peter!" "No your retarded it's Henry!" "No you're both retarded it's obviously the Grandmother!" After a while I had just given up and suspected that everyone was a werewolf. But it wasn't until the end when the werewolf was revealed that everything seemed to make sense.
STORY: There is a teen-aged girls, Valerie, who like all teen-aged girls is in love with a boy who is a bad boy. But despite her feelings for Peter, her parents decide that since she is a girl and girls don't know anything, that they are going to arrange for her to be married to Henry. So Valerie and Peter decide that they are going to run away so that they can live happily ever after. But before the lovely couple can leave, they learn that Valerie's sister has in deed been attacked by the local werewolf, which everyone in the town had offered a monthly sacrifice (a farm animal of some sort). But now that it's the "blood moon" (I'm assuming that this is the time the werewolf has its period) the werewolf craves for human flesh, and so decides to eat Valerie's sister. The town's people feel that this is bad so they hire Father Solomon, a werewolf killer with a sexy mustache who tells the people that the werewolf is a wolf at night, but a human in the day time (Thank You Captain Obvious! Everyone knows that a werewolf is a man who changes into a wolf at night, that is why they are called werewolves! Tell us something thing I didn't know!) "Well," says Father Sexy-stache "Since this means that the werewolf can only be someone who live in the village, and not only that the wolf has a strong connection with someone in the village." It turns out who ever the werewolf is their strong connection is with a girl who has a red cloak. So now Valerie must be the werewolf's next human sacrifice. But who could the werewolf be? Could it be Peter? Henry? Cesaire? Grandmother?
CRITIQUE: "Twilight!" need I say more?... Yes? Okay, It was clear that there was an obvious direction from Cathrine Hardwicke was very good but that the similarities between this movie and "Twilight" are going to be too distracting for anyone to take seriously. There are a lot of lovey-dovey moments that stop the movie with the occasional "Holy S***! Did you see that wolf thing! I think I just peed myself!" moments that make the film interesting. What I did like was that they did not try to re-invent the werewolf legend too drastically, keeping some of the original myths. It isn't until the very end that the werewolf legend is altered for the worse, but I wouldn't want to give too much away now would I. I had seen many movie villains in my life time, but Father Solomon was just too extreme.
The acting was as I predicted, better than "Beastly," but it doesn't mean anything because both movies are chick-flick versions of classic fairy tales, but still I would choose this over "Beastly."
OVERALL: This was a movie that about a 6.5 out of 10. It is quite unexpected, but the "Twilight" connection kills the movie. Cathrine Hardwicke, I still believe in you!I was wondering who the werewolf was all the way up to the very end.
SPOILER: Incase you don't want to see the movie and want to know who the werewolf is:
-Father Solomon had confessed that he had killed his own wife after learning she was a werewolf. He also kills a man who was bitten during the "Blood Moon," and the man's brother kills Father Solomon when his arm is bitten off by the werewolf.
-The father turns out to be the werewolf. He killed Valerie's sister because she was not his real daughter. He kills Adrian, because he is the real father and he kills grandmother for knowing the truth. Valerie kills her father using Father Solomon's hand that was bitten off by the werewolf (because it has silver nails and silver kills werewolves.)
-Peter is bitten by Valerie's father and is the new werewolf, but he is not the kind that bites people which I feel is like kicking the werewolf legend in the balls.