Red Riding Hood or "Hey, we have Gary Oldman!"

I’m really challenging myself with this whole, ‘I can find something good about any movie’ thing.  Red Riding Hood had potential and really could have been what launched Amanda Seyfried into household namedom and the two younger dudes into being slightly recognizable.  Now it’s just something Gary Oldman has to explain away at dinner parties.

It was pretty.  Some of the shots were very pretty though I wonder if they were real or CGI.  And much of the cast was pretty.  Shiloh Fernandez (a mix between Joaquin Phoenix and Ed Westwick) was appealing but has a Robert Pattinson-lite aspect to him.  It probably didn’t help him that Hardwicke directed the first Twilight.  In fact the music in this reminded me of Twilight too.  Oops, getting off track.  Sticking with my positivity vibe, I am POSITIVE that Virginia Madsen was miscast as the mother of our heroine, Valerie (played by Amanda Seyfried).  I’m not talking looks either.  She just should not have been in this movie.  I was happy to see Michael Hogan, aka Col Tigh from Battlestar getting some big screen work.  Max Irons, son of Jeremy, was in this too.  He’s cute and uh, tall.  Apparently I’ve seen his work before but based on this I think maybe his career path should go in a different direction.  As mentioned, Gary Oldman was in the movie too.  This is one of those situations where you feel like he was doing the best he could.  Same kinda goes for Lucas Haas.

Aside from the cast I will say that there was dialog and the actors had it all memorized.  There was even a choreographed group dance(!) which I will excuse because of the time period and the fact that people just knew those kinds of dances back then.  What I will not excuse in that scene was the random girl-on-girl dancing to get a guy’s attention. I am positive that was not needed.

I did get two unintentional chuckles from this movie.  For one it seemed that a few of Gary Oldman’s crew got their helmets from the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  And secondly there was a very dramatic window opening that was worth my $1 at Redbox.