Starring Amanda Seyfriend, Lukas Haas, Gary Oldman, Virginia Madsen, Julie Christie, Billy Burke
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Plot: A medieval village is tormented by a werewolf where a young girl is being forced to marry a man she does not love.
I have mixed feelings about this one, so I'm struggling to review it. It's not a bad movie, but it's not necessarily a good one either.
Amanda Seyfried is Valerie, our Red Riding Hood in this Twilight Saga meets the Brothers Grimm take on the classic tale. Here she is in love with a poor woodcutter, but she is betrothed to the son of wealthy town family. After her sister is killed by a werewolf, the town sends for a famous werewolf killer. Valerie is accused of being a witch and is used to lure the wolf. Most of the movie is seen through Valerie's eyes as she tries to determine who is stalking the town as a werewolf.
Seyfried does a decent job here, but it is Gary Oldman who is the bright spot of this film. When he is in the movie, it makes the film seem much better than it is. Both of the boys playing the love interests, seem to have gone to the Robert Pattinson school of acting, and that's not a compliment. There is a lot of overacting and overreacting.
The best parts of the movie are the visuals and the score/soundtrack which set the perfect mood. There are some absolutely beautiful shots in the film. Unfortunately, mood and visuals do not a movie make. The movie fails in its story and special effects. The story is really just your basic love triangle story mixed with your standard werewolf movie. The Red Riding Hood bits seem really forced, and it's obvious they didn't know how to work it into a cohesive plot. The wolf effect is laughably bad. We don't ever see the change, but when the wolf appears, he's obviously CGI and doesn't even really seem to be a part of the shot.
The other problem is the ending, or the lack of one. Rather than having a strong closing scene, the movie just sort of drifts away into the closing credits - it's not really setting itself up for a sequel, but it's not denying the possibility either.
Ultimately, I think the problem is that they were trying to make a racier version of the classic fairy tale, and it was held back by the desire to have a PG-13 rating. In trying to please too many people, it fails to please anyone.
As I said at the beginning of the review, I have mixed feelings about the movie. Reading over the review, you'd think I hated the movie, and I really didn't. I just think it had a lot of potential that it just completely ignored. In the end, it's better than Twilight, but not as good as last week's Beastly (which was only an average film itself).
*****
Dad Suitability - Skip this one and rewatch the best werewolf movie ever, An American Werewolf in London.
Kid Suitability - Rated PG-13, this one isn't for the little ones. While the violence and bloodshed are minimal, there are some intense scenes and when the wolf is attacking and also some torture. It has a rather passionate nearly-sex scene that gets interrupted.
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