Movie review: Red Riding Hood *

Red Riding Hood *

Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Julie Christie
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Speciality Cinema week of Friday, March 25 - daily at 2:30/6:15/9:15pm except Sunday 1/4/7pm. For more information about film times, call 292-2135.
Runtime: 100 minutes
Fantasy/mystery

From the director of Twilight comes Twi-lite – another poorly acted teen romance with mythical monsters, minimal gore and meagre plot.

This had the potential to be a wonderfully gothic, Tim Burton-style expansion of the classic Grimm Brothers fairytale — think Sleepy Hollow meets The Wolfman.

But it’s the same dreary teen love story as that sucky vampire series — teen girl debates which brooding hunk, one of which might be a werewolf, to shack up with.

The story follows Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), our red-hooded heroine, who lives in a medieval village that is stalked by a werewolf during every full moon.

It usually only feasts on animals but under a blood red moon it slaughters Valerie’s sister, prompting the villagers to call in famed werewolf killer Solomon (Gary Oldman, doing his best with a terrible script).

He reveals the beast is really one of the villagers by day, prompting mass distrust and suspicion.

This is one of many gaping plot holes — how in such a small village, where everyone knows each other’s secrets, has no one worked out who the bloodthirsty beast is?

And since it cannot enter holy ground, why isn’t everyone just hiding in the church?

But the highlight in the ‘you must be kidding’ stakes is Solomon’s method of killing the werewolf — fake silver fingernails. Yes, death by manicure.

Also, look out for the leading men’s slick hair styling — who knew there was a ye olde gel shoppe?

For a while you wonder if the movie is intentionally this bad, a kind of homage to classic turkeys such as Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The basic elements of the fairytale are kept — we have a red-hooded girl, a granny, a wolf and a woodcutter.

But we get little backstory or character development, while the fable’s famed metaphors about female sexual awakening are not fully developed.

The movie does deserve credit for its striking set design though, with a gloomy, stylized forest being home to most of the action. An opening sequence spanning over it is again too similar to Twilight though.

The director should have tried much harder to make this its own movie rather than cash in on the craze for teen horror-romance.

If you’ve seen Twilight, you don’t have to bother with this. If you haven’t, you’ll probably hate this, unless you like movies that are unintentionally funny.

Watch if you liked: Twilight, I Am Number Four.