'Red Riding Hood'

'Red Riding Hood' (PG-13) (1 star)

Writer: David Leslie Johnson
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Julie Christie, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons,
Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas

There is a new wave of Fairy tale movies coming out in the next few years and I hope they learn a lesson from "Red Riding Hood". That is when dealing with such simple plots please learn how to pad the story with something well thought out. Here you have the major set up and then you have to sit through bad acting, bad dialogue and a very super dull love story. You have the story established in five minutes and then the rest of the way you have wolf attacks, a hammy Gary Oldman and then more wolf attacks and in between a corny love story.

The movie is simply a village is attacked by a wolf. Then they think they killed the wolf followed by Gary Oldman, channeling Vincent Price channeling Rod Steiger, telling them that actually the wolf is really one of the towns people. If you look real close at how the characters behave and look in the movie you can figure this out in five seconds.

You also have little Red Riding Hood who is actually in this movie not little and has things on her mind the original character was too young to even think of. There are two boys she is linked to and they are both cute I guess but oh so dull. She is forced into an arranged marriage to one boy but sneaks into the woods with the cuter boy to do you know what. The love scenes in this movie are like the "Twilight" ones, safe and not even as sexy as a half hour "Dora" cartoon. When Amanda Seyfried, who plays big Red, sees the wolf, hears it talking and then mutters "You Can Talk" I was the only one laughing in the theatre. That might be because I was in the theatre with ten people and eight were teenagers. You probably have now got the ideal I laughed a lot in a movie that is not a comedy.

If you are not a teenage girl 13-16 please don't even watch this on DVD and wait for the next "Twilight" movie which is Shakespeare compared to this. The movie has some beautiful and cool visual shots and Gary Oldman is the only one who has energy and he is a riot but that is it. It is just a lot of bad acting, unintentional laughs, a few wolf attacks and a really pathetic love story.