So, I saw Red Riding Hood this weekend.

A little introduction to this review: despite all the things wrong with this movie, there are moments I enjoyed myself. Is part of this because I saw Beastly? You bet. Every time I see a shitty movie from now on, I will have to ask myself, “Is this worse than Beastly?” (Answer: God, I hope not.)

Red Riding Hood is certainly not worse than Beastly. In fact, I was legitimately surprised to see this movie had a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes when Beastly has a 22%, because I saw Beastly, and I saw this. Is Red Riding Hood a problematic, hilariously cheeseball B-movie straining to be A+ cinema and failing? Yup. Is it worse than Beastly? Nope.

Also, just to get it out of the way, I will be yapping about this movie at length – however, I will not be dissecting the ways in which Red Riding Hood is like Twilight. If a director with a penchant for zooming establishing shots of forest land, teen girl coming-of-age stories, and werewolves-as-metaphor wants to make a fairy tale movie, Red Riding Hood seems inevitable, so. And if we’re going to criticize a director for taking the same themes (and actors) and using them more than once, Catherine Hardwicke is going to be the last person in a loooooong line. The movie is often bad, but not for these reasons, you know?

So, let’s do this. We’re going to cut twice – once for a set of mostly spoiler-free impressions on cast, music, costuming, etc., then again for plot, since this movie pretends it has one.

+ Amanda Seyfried. This movie has 99 problems, but Amanda Seyfried ain’t one. She wide-eyes and emotes and does exactly what the movie asks her to do. Sometimes, this means making a fool of herself, which she does gamely. Sometimes this means trying to bring gravitas to some truly terrible dialogue, and she does her best. It helps that she has a completely arresting face, and that Catherine Hardwicke really, really likes that face. When in doubt, cut to Amanda Seyfried’s face!

- Shiloh Walker. His smug non-acting, encapsulated in his accidental Zoolander impression every time he had to walk anywhere, has secured his position as Hot Young Thing. We can all look forward to three smexy roles in close succession, a spread in Details, an Ambercrombie campaign, and a failed indie drama.

+ and – Max Irons. The good news is that he is a better actor than Shiloh Walker. (One would almost have to be.) The bad news is that, unlike Shiloh Walker, he seems aware he’s in a B-movie, and is super uncomfortable with it. Under this burden of understanding, half his dialogue comes off like that kid in the 6th-grade play who just wanted to be out recording sightings in his bird-watching journal and skipping all this marching-around-the-stage nonsense; the rest of the time he keeps hoping for scenes alone with Amanda Seyfried so they can admire one another’s bone structures.

+ Gary Oldman, sort of. I mean, the man is as good as his word: he came for a Ham-Off, and he delivered. But there’s B-movie Dracula Ham-Off, and then there’s Zorg Ham-Off, and then there’s, “Oh, you mean these silver fingernails I have for no real reason and yet are somehow a major plot point? I just wear those when I don’t care how I look” Ham-Off, and that is dangerously close to an event horizon of scenery-chewing, is all I’m saying.

+ and – Billy Burke. I still like you. That said, promise me never, ever to be in a movie that requires you to wear a jerkin. Just, never again, okay?

+ Julie Christie. I appreciated that she was more of a hippie gran than the standard, and that she played it legit creepy, so even if she wasn’t the wolf, she was still that creepy gran who lives in the woods.

- Virginia Madsen. I honestly don’t think her face moved once the entire movie.

+ The music. The score was atmospheric and awesome (well done, Brian Reitzell), and Fever Ray was a great get, even though my heart sank when “Keep the Streets Empty” came on during the dismal make-out scene. Perfectly lovely song, RUINED FOR SIX MONTHS while I scrub that image out. Luckily, the end credits with M83 vocals eased that sting.

+ The cinematography. In this case, at least, Hardwicke’s vast opening zooms worked to establish the creepy, isolated village in the middle of the creepy, isolated marsh with the creepy, isolated forest on either side. The cornflowers growing from the geometric haystacks, the overhead shots of Valerie running through the forest – it’s not going to win awards, but it all worked.

- …except the wolf. Some things are better left unshown; while the wolf was a spectre the tension built, and as soon as we started getting Wolfcam POV shots and extended CGI face-offs where all the actors halfheartedly pretend they’re yelling at a wolf instead of a production assistant carrying a tennis ball, it was all over.

* The costumes. Nothing to write home about in terms of technical achievement, but since Hardwicke planted this movie firmly in Ye Olde and cared not a whit, they were suitable Ye Olde Costumes. It was good to see that peasants had only one or two outfits; most of the peasantry was in Standard Movie-Peasant Gear, which, given Ye Olde, is fine. I do NOT understand why Valerie is dressed in the Lily-from-Legend dress and everyone else is dressed like a Hobbit, and why Valerie’s princess-line peasant outfit requires sleeves so long they had little hipster thumbholes escapes me utterly.

Also escaping me utterly is this dress:

(Note Shiloh Walker smugging behind her. All the focus-racking in the world won’t hide that smug.)
It has a shift under it (CHEMIIISE), and a lace-up kirtle with short sleeves where you can tie on longer sleeves, except the shift seems to be sleeveless, since there’s skin under the sleeve laces, and her sleeves are – I mean, is that supposed to be the color of a dingy shift? Is it just a coincidence? Are we pretending these are shift sleeves, or outer sleeves, or what? Are you expecting her to lace her shift sleeves into her outer dress? Is this an Escher garment? EXPLAIN. (Also, thumbholes.)

If you only wanted to sneak in and check on the B-movie timbre of the movie (Cheese Level: Oldman), stop here, because the “plot” is partially a whowulfit, and even though it is both an afterthought and painfully obvious in the movie itself, we’re spoiler-cutting again.

An appalled Amanda Seyfried gets spoiled for the last thirty pages by Julie Christie, who is scratching her tummy and/or jigging, because she is Julie Christie and does as she pleases.

The Plot (Spoilers):

I’m going to try to hash this out the old-fashioned way.

The wolf stuff is really the Macguffin of the first two-thirds of the film and only becomes relevant again at the end, which makes a certain amount of sense if you think in terms of a very short walk in the woods and a very long space of time to fill. Sadly, this is the last time anything will make sense.

What Catherine Hardwicke puts in the front third is a mess that shows she wanted to do a lot of things. She just didn’t achieve them all (or any, whatever, it’s fine!).

One thing she wanted to do was make political parallels. After the wolf’s first attack on a human, some villagers storm up the mountain to kill it (you know how wolves love to live on snowy mountains far away from tree cover and food sources), but the wolf is not in the cave they think it is (GET IT?).

Gary Oldman’s character, Father Solomon, rolls into town, establishes martial law for “the public good,” and insists people’s homes be searched, claiming, “If you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear!” The wolf becomes a background threat as Father Solomon, convinced the wolf is a villager, starts torturing people into giving up other potential suspects, setting curfews, and installing a Ye Olde Terroriste Warning System.

This could be an interesting attempt to introduce political subtext to a YA movie and perhaps help youngsters realize, however dimly, that letting people strip them of their civil rights might backfire.

Sadly, the way it’s executed is Gary Oldman in a Dumbledore robe, with his assistants:

Have some token PoC! Gary Oldman brings plenty with him! All but one die. Only one has any lines. I cannot even about this whole thing. It was so boggling when it came up, and handled so poorly (one of the men-at-arms appears an hour into the movie having never been seen before – was someone out sick and they needed a sub?), that I honestly don’t even know what this was supposed to be about. If you want to de-lily your Ye Olde Towne, I’m all for it, but holy crap, this is not the way.

Also, they bring a metal elephant with them to roast people in. Apparently the Romans did it when they were hunting werewolves? (You know those Romans.) The only person they actually roast is the literal village idiot (I can’t), who they pump for information and then broil until medium rare. (I CAN’T.)

Something that is handled much better than the political allegory (it would have to be) is the love triangle, which surprised me, because I tend to think of Catherine Hardwicke as permanently 14 (right at home in YA cinema).

Here’s how it works:

Valerie loves woodsman Smugface. Smugace loves Valerie.

Valerie’s family arranges for her to marry blacksmith Henry. Valerie doesn’t want to marry Henry. Henry thinks this is because Valerie’s sister was the wolf’s victim, and is gentlemanly about waiting until she’s done grieving before he renews his addresses.

When Henry’s father is killed by the random gray wolf that apparently really DOES like living on the snowy mountain all alone, she expresses sympathy in an appropriate way.

Actual line of dialogue from him here: “Please go. I don’t want you to see me this way.” I laughed really, really hard. “I KNOW HOW THE LADIES HATE TORMENTED, CHISELED, FAINTLY SWEATY MEN WHO LONG MANFULLY FOR THEM. GET OUT. GET OUT!”

Then the whole village decides to celebrate them killing the wolf, despite the fact that Father Solomon points out that the werewolf would actually be a human and not just a sad vinyl wolf head on a stick, and despite the fact that Henry’s father and Valerie’s sister are both dead. But there’s no time for grieving! PARTY.

During this party, which is somehow very engaging despite the laughable subject matter, Smugface tries to get Valerie out of his head by dancing with some other girl. Valerie, furious, grabs her best girlfriend to Show Him by getting her faux-lesbian on during a very particular Ye Olde Dance that involves a lot of pouting and sliding up and down one’s partner. (You know how those medievals do.)

There are so many things going on here. There’s snow on the ground but she’s wearing short sleeves? Why are you making this bizarre, seemingly-extempore dance a priority when your sister’s body isn’t even cold yet? It’s probably okay to sit it out, is all! Also, Smugface is not worth any of your faux-lesbian time, girl, for serious.

However, it works (shows what I know about medieval dance), and she and Smugface make out as I mourn that Fever Ray is thus defiled), and as they make out, Henry comes in and sees them.

In the next scene, Henry says, “I don’t think you want to marry me. Should we break this engagement?” “That would be great!” she agrees.

And that’s the end of that! Seriously! Later, when she’s accused of witchcraft, he stands up for her and conspires to help her escape, but at no time does he bring it up or seem to expect anything, and then at the end of the movie he wanders off to do whatever it is people do in epilogues.

This movie had a lot of issues (one of which being that by the end of the movie he had more chemistry with Amanda Seyfried than Smugface does, whoops), but I appreciate a love triangle in which no one was a dick about it for an hour.

(People who are dicks: everyone who talks about Valerie’s dead sister, who loved Henry but wasn’t a candidate because she wasn’t pretty, where “wasn’t pretty” is code for “was actually Henry’s half-sister because of some Ye Olde Adultery.” Seeing as they’re in the world of fairy tales, this isn’t as big an impediment as they seem to think, but I guess that big ugly cow Lucie was doomed anyway.)

Also, in the middle of all this is a very bad whowulfit about which one of the villagers is the wolf, and it speaks to Valerie, who notices it has brown human eyes, just like 99% of the villagers, so who could it possibly be, blah blah blah, doesn’t even matter, because you can call this one about ten minutes into the movie if you’ve ever seen a Law and Order episode. (That person does get some nice B-movie expositing out of it, though, which I guess is nice.)

The thing that is handled best is the actual Red Riding Hood part, which we don’t really get to until the last 20 minutes of the movie, but there are some nice callbacks and images.

This is Valerie, accused of witchcraft for being able to speak to the wolf, and since it asked her to come away with it or it would destroy the village, the whole village is like, “SOUNDS GOOD HERE SHE IS OKAY BYE.”

The wolf mask is something Father Solomon brought with him in case of public shaming (you know how it is when you have to publicly shame people with that wolf mask), though he might just be a super-prepared guy in general, since he brought his Elizabeth: The Golden Age armor with him, too.

(He had it made to match his silver fingernails.)

So the PoC wolfsistants take sniper positions and wait for the wolf to kidnap the crap out of her. Obviously the two dudes have teamed up, though, and there’s a big escape scene, except that she doesn’t escape whatsoever, but it’s okay because Father Solomon dies because if you’re bitten by a werewolf during the blood moon you turn into a werewolf and must be killed with a silver blade, whereas if you’re killed by a werewolf outside a blood moon you’re just dinner, I guess? There is a lot of conditional werewolf lore going on in Ye Olde Village.

The next afternoon Valerie wakes up from a “Your eyes are so large, Grandmother” dream, throws on her cloak, and heads into the woods. When Smugface tries to stop her, she tells him to leave her alone, then stabs him when he won’t (yay! Boundaries!), and books it to Grandma’s.

Naturally it’s not Grandma, it’s her dad, that character who made no sense whatsoever since he was either drunk or not in the scene, but he wants her to follow in his wolfy footsteps and come with him to “the city,” where wolves just love to be, I guess. She says no, in a wonderfully B-movie way, and then they just keep talking for 20 minutes. This is one of those moments where Hardwicke tries to make a point about Being a Teen Girl Today, which almost goes somewhere, and then implodes on itself like spinach soufflé in a microwave, until you just pray the scene will stop.

Then the woodsman comes in, and Riding Hood dispatches the wolf, and they sew the wolf’s body up with stones (nice callbacks! THREE HOURS LATER).

Here ends the good part.

See, Smugface has been bitten, so he’s a werewolf now, so they have sex in the woods (priorities!), and then he leaves “until I can learn to control what I am,” which is a crock even in this nonsense movie canon full of sentient, guilt-tripping wolves. If it’s a matter of self-control, then a lot of the terror of the wolf just vanished. (Also, the wolf mostly eats a pig a month, so it’s really not even self-control, since eating a pig is normal predator behavior, and most of the time the werewolf is a perfectly functional human, and the reason for the last wolf killing people is extremely personal and not likely to come up again, so what is anyone even talking about at this point, I can’t even).

But she lets him go off into the foggiest river in the entire world, and then takes up residence at Grandmother’s house, because in some ways the village had been more frightening than the wilderness (interesting! Tell me more!), and also she’s mostly waiting for her wolf boyfriend to come back (nope, we’re done, you can stop telling me!).

This movie, as you can see, is a total mess. However, it is the kind of total mess that has its moments of being fun in between the long stretches of weird political allegory about elephants that kill people when they get hot (GET IT?), and even then, most of the mistakes this movie makes are mistakes of overreaching, which at least means she’s trying something more than Twilight. So, it’s a mess I’ll probably see again, and roll my eyes at the same places, which seems to be about where this movie lives best.