Over the River & Through the Tweens

Like many a commodity in the modern age of the economic long tail, pornography is now available for every possible palette. Clown sex? Easy. Grandmas dressed in drag? It’s on the shelf at my Bronx 7/11. Seinfeld parodies and Edward Penishands? C’mon, give Silicone Valley a challenge.

I bring this up to point out an easy one sentence review of Red Riding Hood: if you are a 13 year old girl, this film is your porn.

Dreamy boys with perfect cool guy haircuts fighting for your honor? Check. Pretty clothes and perfect eye makeup that never runs in the constant snow (that never melts)? Check. Those hidden family secrets you’ve always secretly hoped your family had to make your origins more interesting? It’s all there. Gary Oldman in purple velour? Raise your glass of mead!

Quick Plot: As a young girl, Valerie enjoys sneaking off with future lumberjack Peter for wacky rabbit-hunting hijinks. Hey, we were all seven once, am I right?

Flash forward ten years where Valerie has blossomed into the alien eye bulging Amanda Seyfried and Peter is now the sullen kid from Deadgirl sporting a Robert Pattinson gassy look of constant indigestion. Because this is a movie made for the Twilight audience, it’s necessary to have a tepid love triangle. Rounding out the corner is Jeremy Irons’ son as Henry, the wealthy(ish) blacksmith betrothed to Valerie because mom Miss Piggy--I mean, Virginia Madsen--wants her daughter to have a better life than she did with her own lumberjack husband (played by Twilight/Drive Angry alum Billy Burke).

Side note: to my knowledge, Billy Burke is unrelated to the Billie Burke who played Glinda in the second best film of all time, The Wizard of Oz. I find this kind of confusion quite distracting.

BillIE Burke, not

BillY Burke

Moving on, Red--I mean, Li’l Big Eyes--I mean, Valerie has bigger problems than arranged marriage when a werewolf starts terrorizing her village. Enter Gary Oldman in The Greatest Cinematic Entrance Of All Time, i.e., a parade caboosed by an iron elephant and two African armed guards. Oldman plays a witch & werewolf hunting holy man that belongs in every mediocre-to-awful movie ever made. Should director Catherine Hardwicke return to Twilight and digitally insert Gary Oldman’s Father Solomon pointing his sword and scratching the shapeshifting Jacob with his silver fingernails in every other frame, I would be contractually obligated to revise my original review as a now ten (out of four) star movie.

Anyway. Werewolf. Love triangle. Anachronistic and slightly sapphic dance-off followed by a CGI werewolf that talks. Yes, it’s slightly silly, slightly adorable, and naturally, has its yellow eyes on Valerie because dear 13 year old females watching, VALERIE IS YOU!

See, Red Riding Hood knows who’s watching and generally provides plenty of eye and emotional candy to make them happy. One example: Valerie has a sultry makeout session on a hay floor. If you’re 13 and have never had a makeout session, this sounds incredibly romantic. When you’re a wrinkled 29 year old, however, you know that no amount of sexy kissing can possibly be worth the itchiness and minor stabbings experienced when laying on a haystack.

But do we want our 13 year old girls to know such sad and disappointing life facts? Maybe not, and thusly, Red Riding Hood feels like it should gently join the club of Romeo + Juliet and other teenage wet dreamy films. Unlike the Twilight series, Red Riding Hood at least centers itself on a likable, somewhat strong-minded female character that isn’t trying to kill herself when her high school boyfriend leaves town to fix his hair (or something). And you know, everyone’s eye shadow looks great and despite the fact that every single character is at one point suspected of being a homicidal werewolf (save, of course, for the one character who actually IS a homicidal werewolf), the boys are about as threatening as Tostito’s mild salsa. So while I wouldn’t recommend Red Riding Hood to any modern-thinking adult, it certainly has its safe charms for a younger, fantasy happy audience.

High Points

This film features the absolute best, most subtle and unacknowledged act of familial cannibalism ever put onscreen. Also, there’s an iron elephant that burns witches and the most awkward offering-of-virginity scene I’ve witnessed in a PG13 mainstream movie ever. So that’s that

Low Points

A “Grandmother, what big teeth you have” is cheesy even in a film crafted from cheddar

Lessons Learned

Hair gel was all the rage in medieval North America (or whenever the hell this movie took place)

When traveling through small villages, always keep your astronomical diorama on hand. Sure, it’s cumbersome and could easily be substituted with an improvised demonstration involving a few fruits and rocks, but think of the looks of shock and awe those townspeople will display when they see its  Hellraiser-like opening trick

So long as the snow is falling in an elegant manner, there’s no need to ever put on a sweater

If wearing the color red is considered grounds of condemning a woman as a to-be-burned witch, perhaps you shouldn’t, you know, knit a scarlet cape for your granddaughter’s wedding 

See/Skip/Sneak In

Well, Red Riding Hood is a very pretty movie, with the kind of clothing closet a Renaissance Fair would sacrifice their finest goats and turkey legs for. While it’s not quite on the same below sea level as Twilight, it is an entertaining bundle of ridiculousness that you might find fairly chuckleworthy. Best with cheap beer and the comfort of your own economical and effortless home drinking game.