Red Hiding Hood

This weekend, I had big plans to buckle down and get a ton of homework done. So naturally, when the best friend asked if I wanted to ignore the mountain of school that has accumulated around me and accompany her and her mother to a late-night viewing of Red Riding Hood on Saturday, I said yes.

I am embarrassed to say I was excited to see this movie. In my defense, Danica and I are excited about anything to do with the former cast of Veronica Mars (Ahh, adolescence….) and Amanda Seyfried played the dead best friend of Kristen Bell. To lend me a bit more credibility, Gary Oldman is also amongst the cast of Red Riding Hood. My logic was pretty much “Gary Oldman plays Sirius Black in HP, and I love HP, so I will most likely love Red Riding Hood”.

What I fool I am.

As Danica and I strolled through the lobby of the Criterion 4 White Rock (for those unaware of the travesty that is White Rock cinema, cherish that ignorance) and into the theatre, I looked more closely at the movie poster. Here I saw the words “Directed by Catherine Hardwicke”. My heart sank with the realization that I had, in fact, just spent $10 to see a movie directed by the woman who brought us the first (and worst, thank you very much) Twilight movie.

After some moaning and the reception of a stern look from the best friend, I figured that I would make the most of this sure-to-be-terrible movie. And I actually quite enjoyed the previews (who doesn’t? They are the best part of any film).

I’ll spare you the finer details. All you need to know is that Gary Oldman is not a very nice man in this film, every attempt to directly reference the children’s story was poorly integrated and met with an uncomfortable laughter stirring inside me, and the biggest question I had throughout the film was “why do all the men in this movie seem like perverts?”

This I will say. What I most looked forward to in Red Riding Hood was that I knew I was about to be mind-fucked. The whole point of this film is to have you guessing who the wolf is. You think you’ve figured it out, and then the person you thought it was gets murdered. So despite the fact that this movie was straight up not good, I figured I had at least this much to look forward to.

Alas. I won’t give away the ending, but I thought someone was the wolf, and still expected the mind-fuck, but it never came because I am the most brilliant and guessed right. So even this aspect of the movie was a let down for me.

Red Riding Hood is not a good movie. I should really be going into the theatre next time with more to go on than “Actress from a failed series I loved in high school + actor from HP MUST = high quality entertainment”. I’m glad I ended up seeing this one if only for the escape it provided from my homework. But honestly, the best part of my night was when we went to Wal-Mart after and Danica and I sang and danced through the housewares. Though, to be fair, isn’t that the best part of any night?