2 stars
"One bite," whispers the man with the supernatural gaze to the woman in the hood, "and you'll be like me." Wait. Is this the latest arrival in the "Twilight" franchise?
Contractually, no. In every other way, yes. "Red Riding Hood," director Catherine Hardwicke's overheated yet underpowered version of the Little Red Riding Hood folk tale, reworks the cautionary lesson and sexual-awakening allegory for a generation weaned on "Charmed" and "Twilight" and "Mean Girls" and the relentlessly popular musical version of "Wicked." Between this movie and "Battle: Los Angeles," both sexes and various species of 15-year-olds are getting a ripe old load of what Hollywood believes they want this week.
Shot almost entirely on soundstages, this is an oddly claustrophobic depiction of a French-type village (key early versions of the folk tale were French) long ago and far away. The village, Daggerhorn, has a werewolf situation, though no human residents have been harmed in 20 years. All becomes paranoia and bloodlust when the monster kills the sister of the prettiest thing in town, Valerie, played by Amanda "What Big Eyes You Have!" Seyfried.
Valerie's hot for the local hunky woodcutter (Shiloh Fernandez, a tiny step up from Taylor Lautner mediocrity) but family circumstances dictate her arranged marriage to the nice but less smoldering boy with money (Max Irons). Valerie protests; her mother, played by Virginia Madsen, counters with: "I know what a woodcutter earns!" Laboring under unfortunate peasant hair, Billy Burke, Bella's hapless but sensitive father in the "Twilight" series, plays Valerie's pop. Julie Christie pops up as the grandmother who always has a stew going on the fire, and who reminds her granddaughter that "we all have secrets."
With its puckeringly sweet color scheme, "Red Riding Hood" resembles a Renaissance Faire beset by a computer-generated wolf. The guiding notion of David Leslie Johnson's screenplay is that we all have a wolf inside of us. Valerie's apparent psychic communication with the werewolf -- the two carry on conversations with each other -- draws accusations of witchcraft, fomented by the visiting wolf-removal specialist hammed righteously by that reliable righteous ham Gary Oldman. So "Red Riding Hood" is really more like a revival of "The Crucible" staged at a Renaissance Faire.
"Red Riding Hood" has its moments of straight-faced silliness and occasional beauty. Hardwicke brought some modesty and feeling to the first "Twilight" film, and she's one of the few contemporary American directors who knows how, and when, to deploy slow-motion for poetic effect. Schlocky poetic effect, true, but what do you want in a movie like this? Actual cinematic poetry?
With her background in visual design, Hardwicke clearly was preoccupied with getting the look, feel and texture of Daggerhorn to her liking. But this script is a plodder, Seyfried's voice-over narration coming and going with the fake breeze. And Hardwicke is positively boom- and crane-crazy, her camera constantly going for the errant swoop or overhead ceiling's-eye-view perspective without sufficient attention to visual rhythm or spatial clarity. Ordinarily the phrase is "bird's-eye-view," but, like Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow," "Red Riding Hood" wears its hidebound artificiality on its sleeve -- you're well aware, every second, of there being a ceiling, a lid, on the action.
A project of producer Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company, the film may connect with its target audience. It has no sex but considerably more vamping than "Twilight" coughed up in its first three installments. All in all, though, Stephen Sondheim did Red better in "Into the Woods," in a mere two-lyric passage in just one song. "He made me feel excited/Well, excited and scared," that girl in the hood confessed, pointing out the dangerous sexual awakening inherent in the story. Seyfried's a good actress, but all the art direction in the world can't make this version of events the stuff either of dreams or of nightmares.
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence and creature terror, and some sensuality).
Running time: 1:49.
Cast: Amanda Seyfried (Valerie); Gary Oldman (Solomon); Billy Burke (Cesaire); Shiloh Fernandez (Peter); Max Irons (Henry); Virginia Madsen (Suzette); Lukas Haas (Father Auguste); Julie Christie (Grandmother).
Credits: Directed by Catherine Hardwicke; written by David Leslie Johnson; produced by Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Leonardo DiCaprio and Julie Yorn. A Warner Bros. Pictures release.
