RED RIDING HOOD (Catherine Hardwicke). 99 minutes. Opens Friday (March 11). See listings. Rating: N
Based ever so loosely on the eponymous folk tale, Red Riding Hood is set in some unspecified medieval village where the meticulously costumed residents live in monthly terror of a rampaging beast they call The Wolf. For as long as anyone can remember, we’re told, The Wolf has brought death and devastation to the village. That doesn’t quite track with what we learn later, but then nothing in this movie holds up for more than five minutes.
Fairest of all the maidens in the village is Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), who loves hunky, smooth-chested woodsman Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) but learns her parents have promised her to similarly hunky and smooth-chested Henry (Max Irons). This allows director Catherine Hardwicke to restage the love-triangle dynamic of the Twilight series in, like, a totally different setting. Valerie’s torn between two lovers while a werewolf tears through her neighbours.
Oh, right, the werewolf thing. Turns out that The Wolf is actually a werewolf, which apparently no one in the village knows until a crusading priest named Solomon shows up to fill them in. He’s played by Gary Oldman, who seems to be struggling to repress flashbacks to that terrible version of The Scarlet Letter he made with Demi Moore back in the 90s.
Solomon froths vaingloriously about evil and witchcraft and runs around with his coterie intimidating people, while Valerie steals away to roll around in a barn with Peter and wonder what he really meant when he said he wanted to eat her up.
You know what they say, though sometimes campy innuendo is just campy innuendo. And it turns out there are plenty of other people who might secretly be The Wolf. After a close encounter with the creature, Valerie starts suspecting everyone around her, and Hardwicke and screenwriter David Johnson pile on the red herrings – Peter, Henry, the nervous town priest (Lukas Haas)… even Valerie’s kindly old grandmother, who’s accused of smelling “musky” in what may be the lowest point in Julie Christie’s career.
See, werewolves have this distinctive smell, which no one in the village has ever noticed or commented upon, and the character who ultimately is revealed to be The Wolf would have been in sniffing range of everyone else for most of the picture.
Hardwicke doesn’t want her audience to think about that, though. She wants them to think about how beautiful her young lovers are and how vivid Valerie’s red cape looks and how awesome crane shots are, because she can’t go three minutes without swinging her camera over the heads of her cast.
Red Riding Hood won’t end Hardwicke’s career, but it should. She can’t direct actors, she can’t pace a scene, she can’t even establish atmosphere in a tavern scene. This doesn’t even work as camp the audience at my preview screening was hooting by the third reel. It was the only way to fight back.
normw@nowtoronto.com
