Growing up, Little Red Riding hood was one of my favorite tales. I used to make my mother read from a worn, dog-ear paged hardcover edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales (although she was Little Red-Cap then) almost every night before, and the story of Red's encounter with the wolf was always my favorite one to hear. So needless to say, I was quite excited when I began to see trailers for Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood. Little did I know was that she was complete destroy a classic.
In theory, the movie was okay. What drew to me to it was that it seems interesting to me to take an old classic and turn it on its head and adapt it into something the audience hasn't thought of before. The problem with this particular retelling is that the audience did think of it. Five minutes into the film, the Wolf's human identity becomes obvious and the point of the movie, the village's effort to figure out who among them is really the Wolf, begins to drag on for an hour more before Red finally figures out what the audience has known all along. At least there was a little throwback to Grimm's tale when she fills the Wolf's stomach with stones.
And then there's the trouble with the biggest subplot, the love triangle. Mainly, Red (Amanda Seyfried) loves one boy (Peter played by Shiloh Fernandez), who presumably loves her too, but her mother has already betrothed her to someone else (Henry played by Max Irons). Problem. The problem is that the movie begins too late in the romance of her and Peter because when the movie begins, he's already trying to break up with her to appease her parents. We're never shown why she loves him and we spend more time getting to know Henry than we do Peter, so we're left wondering: why are you desperate to be with this guy who just dumped you?
Both guys are equally good-looking and prove to be equally important in helping her out with the Wolf, so why chose one over the other? The storyline just isn't flushed out enough to matter and I've never been the type of girl to just accept that she loves him because she loves him and there isn't anything more to it. Maybe that's a flaw in me. Maybe it's also a flaw that I think the movie should have spent less time with the two boys and more time worrying about the Wolf and keeping his identity a little less transparent.
It’s a film worth seeing if you enjoy the classic tale and are interested in seeing a movie you don't have to think about. If you're looking to be entertained without being intellectually challenged, this is the movie for you. Because this is one film that isn't going to test your mind at all. And it's one that's good for a laugh. Just wait until the end when Red is walking up a snowy mountain and the train of her red cape is about twenty feet too long. Just wait.
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