21 May 2011

Red Riding Hood


Red Riding Hood is very loosely built on the saga about the young woman who meets the Big Bad Wolf when on her way to visit her grandmother.
Of course we get to meet both the girl, the grandmother and the wolf and in one of the scenes the famous dialogue about why her grandmother has such big eyes, ears and teeth appear but aside from this, there are few similarities with the ancient tale.

The story is situated to an old medieval village where a young girl - Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) - falls in love with an orphaned woodcutter (not Woody Woodpecker) - Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) - despite her parents wish that she should marry another young man - Henry Lazar (Max Irons), with wealthy parents.
This village is haunted by a wolf and when a young woman is killed by the wolf, the male citizens one day decide to hunt the wolf down and kill it and so they do - they think. Unfortunately for them, they killed an ordinary wolf, not the werewolf they're really hunting.
One day the village is visited by 'Father Solomon' (Gary Oldman), a rather questionable priest/clergyman (as most priests are) and his soldiers/hunters. He explains that the murderer/the werewolf is among the citizens in the village and they need something very special to elicit the wolf in that man or woman.
As our young Red Riding Hood has told her friends that she has been talking to the werewolf once, she is now used as a 'bait'.
Before this happens she has come to suspect everyone around her for being the werewolf: Her mother, her grandmother, the two young men in love with her, her female friends and many others - except one.

I (Gunnar) wasn't at all impressed by this movie even though it started well.
Gradually it developed into an action movie, using some more or less visible mythical material as a platform for the storytelling - or the action.
Concerning the werewolf, it was quite amusing when one saw him speak to Valerie (it made us laugh) but it's a Walt Disney-production wherefore one can't expect them to make the Big Bad, To Bad.
Of course her loved one get bitten by the werewolf in the final struggle and has to leave the village, before becoming what he doesn't want to become but by now, our 'Chaperon Rouge' is used to werewolfs wherefore she later on accepts him as he is.
The beauty and the Beast again and again and again...

Personally, I had high expectations on the photo but unfortunately it was rather ordinary too.

No comments: