Red Riding Hood (2011) Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen Movie Review

Red Riding Hood (2011)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Amanda Seyfried in Red Riding Hood (2011)

Left in the Woods

In a village in the midst of the woods lives Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) who is in love with her friend, woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez). But her parents have arranged for her to marry Henry (Max Irons) who comes from money. Whilst Peter and Valerie plan to run away a truce with the werewolf which inhabits the surrounding woods is broken when the beast kills one of the villagers instead of settling for the monthly offering of live stock which the villagers leave it. Whilst the men plan to slaughter the beast Father Auguste (Lukas Haas) wants them to bring in fabled werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Garry Oldman) who warns them that the werewolf may in fact be one of them as it takes human form during the day.

I have learned many things from watching movies and of those explains why I would prefer to watch older movies than modern ones. The reason is quite simple, almost every time I watch a big screen movie made from within the last 5 years it makes me feel old and often fails to deliver what I class as entertainment. This is the case when it comes to "Red Riding Hood" a big screen adaptation of the fairytale which seems to have tried to turn it into something akin to "Twilight" but with a fairytale setting and in doing so butchering the recognizable story with in an inch of its life. Basically it is barely recognizable as the fairytale and worse off for being so.

Shiloh Fernandez in Red Riding Hood (2011)

The thing is that if I was a teenager dealing with raging hormones maybe "Red Riding Hood" would entertain as it has the romantic conflict of two rivals after one damsel. We also have that "Twilight" element and I don't just mean the romance or the supernatural werewolf malarkey as there is also Billy Burke in another dad role. And yes we have this fantasy, fairytale, ye olde village in the wood set but none of this did much for me and almost felt a little bit generic to the point that at times it felt like costumes and sets used from another fairytale re-imaginings had been used in this.

Because "Red Riding Hood" has this generic quality it has to be said that despite a cast of familiar names and faces the end result is forgettable performances. In truth there are times where it feels like actors who can do great things end up over acting to try and make some sort of impact on the movie especially as so much of the movie seems to be about the look.

What this all boils down to is that "Red Riding Hood" was not for me and despite not being a bad movie it didn't entertain as I would have liked. In fact this is one of a growing number of recently made movies which whilst probably entertaining for a young audience didn't offer much other that production and star names for me.


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