Ask a writer, an avid reader, a Wordonista, or your all-around English Nazi. They'll all tell you the same thing: the book is (almost) always better than the movie. What I'm about to tell you is no exception.
I was really, really looking forward to the release of Red Riding Hood -- to the point where I went to a matinee alone because all my friends (and a semi-uninterested Husband) were at work. The end result reminded me of what it was like to date before I met my husband.
A guy seemed intriguing. He talked a lot of shit about his game, but when it came down to it, he slobbered like a camel, or thought kissing was a face-mashing contest, or flicked his tongue into your mouth like a snake or an unfurling party favor and I found myself asking, Why the hell did I ever think this was a good idea?
The Red Riding Hood previews, like the men I didn't marry (and for good reason), was misleading. The actual movie wasn't so great.
The Red Riding Hood previews, like the men I didn't marry (and for good reason), was misleading. The actual movie wasn't so great.
I used to think that Catherine Hardwicke got a raw deal with the whole Twilight thing (The saga getting a new director every 25 seconds). Now, I think it's because she lacks vision. Sitting in the theater, two thoughts kept recurring to me over and over.
One . . . People are idiots and obviously don't look up movies before they go. Audience members gasped in horror at some parts of the movie, as if expecting Red/Valerie to be a chaste girl who skipped through the daisies.
Two . . . I kept having to make myself not tweet during the movie.
Me! The teacher who hates cell phones in class and yelled at the last lady who answered her cell phone in the movies.
However, I was dying to text something like this about her directing style: "We get it, Catherine Hardwicke, you like to pan out over the forest. Just like Twilight. Enough already.”
She spent so much damn time panning that it took away from the plot. I think if she'd cut that, or just faded to black between scenes like a normal director, they wouldn't have needed to begin the movie more than 50 pages into a 197-page novel.
We would've liked the characters better. Also, Gary Oldman's character was supposed to be a Moor. And they made it seem as if the only two men in town that weren't old and married, or slightly retarded, were the two after Valerie. And the secret about her sister was not in the novel.
The hottest scene in the book, however, a stolen moment in a granary between Peter (the woodcutter) and Valerie (Red) was witnesses by her fiancé, Henry. Unfortunately, I was hoping for more of a spin on this triangle. Henry, played by Jeremy Irons' son, Max Irons, was pretty damn hot.
Other than seeing that eye candy, and thinking he might have made a better Edward Cullen than Pattinson or Shiloh Fernandez, I have to agree with USA Today's assessment of the film. Writer Claudia Puig called her article “'Red Riding Hood': The better to bore you with” and wrote, “You can almost hear the conversation with studio execs about how to reach the vampire- and werewolf-loving young female audience” -- though I don't think that's what the novelist wanted.
And if you're looking forward to the extra chapter to be released March 14, don't go see the movie first.
It'll probably ruin it for you. Just a guess, but I bet it's right. I bet my take on the movie hits home for all my fellow English dorks, too.
Like my friend, Jenn, said after I told her about the movie, "Guess she (Hardwicke) couldn't see the trees for all the forest."
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